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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 
SELECTIONS FROM 

ROBERT BROWNING 



BY 

JULIUS E. WARREN 

HEAD OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, HIGH SCHOOL 
BKOCKTONMASS. 



AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 

BOSTON ATLANTA 






0^ 

v 3 



Copyright, 19 1 8, by 
American Book Company 

SELECTIONS FROM BROWNING 
W. P. I 



JAN 17 j yiJ 
©CLA512074 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 

Browning's Life 7 

Browning's Poetry 12 

POEMS 

Cavalier Tunes 17 

I. Marching Along 17 

II. Give a Rouse 18 

III. Boot and Saddle 19 

"How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" . 20 

Incident of the French Camp 23 

Herve Rdsl 24 

Pheidippides 30 

Tray 35 

The Pd3d Piper of Hamelin 37 

The Twins 47 

The Boy and the Angel 48 

The Patriot 51 

My Last Duchess 53 

Up at a Villa — Down in the City 55 

De Gustibus 58 

The Lost Leader 60 

Memorabilia 61 

Evelyn Hope 62 

Love among the Ruins 64 

Home Thoughts, from the Sea 67 

Home Thoughts, from Abroad 67 

Songs from " Pippa Passes " 68 

Meeting at Night 70 

Parting at Morning 70 

summum bonum 71 

Life in a Love 71 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Song From " James Lee's Wife " — Among the Rocks. ... 72 

Misconceptions 73 

A Face 73 

My Star 74 

Prospice 75 

The Last Ride Together 7 6 

By the Fireside ' 80 

Instans Tyrannus 9 1 

The Italian in England 94 

A Grammarian's Funeral 99 

Andrea del Sarto 104 

Abt Vogler 112 

Saul 117 

Rabbi Ben Ezra 13 2 

One Word More 14° 

Epilogue to Asolando. 148 

NOTES 149 



INTRODUCTION 

Browning's Life 

Robert Browning was born May 7, 1812, in Southampton 
Street, Camberwell, a suburb of London on the south side of 
the Thames, which at that time combined the charms of city 
and country. From a nearby hill Browning could look down 
upon the great city of London spread out in its glory and its 
squalor, while in the other direction, but a short distance from 
his home, ran meadow, moor, and forest. At the present time 
London has spread southward and Southampton Street is an 
unsightly section of the city. The Browning house and its 
surroundings have entirely disappeared. 

Browning's father, also named Robert, was a clerk in the 
Bank of England, holding increasingly important official posi- 
tions. As he had a good income, he was able to indulge his 
taste for books and to spend his leisure hours in study. He 
was, indeed, a man of rare culture, with literary as well as artis- 
tic attainments. He wrote verse even more rapidly than his 
son, although he never published a single poem. 

Browning's mother had a serene, lovable nature, and was 
deeply religious. To his early training received from her, 
Robert Browning's deep spiritual and religious feeling was 
probably due. To her, also, he owed his love of music, for she 
was an accomplished musician and often played to her children. 

In such a home, surrounded by comforts and free from care, 
Robert Browning was brought up. He was able to devote 
himself to writing, without the necessity of working to earn his 
living. He himself fully appreciated what he owed to these 
circumstances. "My dear father," he said, "put me in a condi- 
tion most favorable for the best work I was capable of. When 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

I think of the many authors who had to fight their way through 
all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to be proud of my 
achievements." One who knew the family well and visited 
them frequently says, " Father, mother, only son, and only 
daughter formed a most united, harmonious, and intellectual 
family." 

In the matter of education Browning's father allowed him 
full freedom of choice. His formal schooling was unusually 
meager — two short periods at private schools, some private 
tutoring, and two years at the London University. Most of 
his knowledge he owed to his father and to the well-stocked 
library from which he filled his mind with the curious and 
unusual learning found in such abundance in his later writings. 
His mother instructed him in music, and his love of art was 
strengthened by frequent visits to the Dulwich galleries near 
his home. His physical well-being was not neglected. He 
learned to fence, to box, to ride, and to dance. 

Even in his boyhood the dramatic instinct was strong in 
Browning. In his school days he wrote several plays and formed 
a troupe of boy players for their presentation. 

In the choice of a vocation, young Browning was as free and 
unhampered as he had been in his education. His father was 
willing that he should spend as long as he chose in preparation 
for his life work. He believed so strongly in the abilities and 
judgment of his son that he allowed him absolute freedom of 
selection of the particular line of art which he should study; 
for it seemed a foregone conclusion in the Browning family 
that Robert would be an artist in some direction. So it hap- 
pened that at an early age young Browning began to prepare 
himself for the great work of writing poetry. 

At this time the formal verse and prose of the eighteenth 
century were giving place to the liberty-loving spirit of the 
romantic movement. The young poets of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, — Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth — were break- 
ing away from the conventions of the past and were seeking the 
freedom to feel, to think, to live, and to write as individuals. 



INTRODUCTION g 

Byron was the first of this modern group to interest young 
Browning, whose earliest boyish verses were written in imitation 
of Byron's style. A collection of these early poems was made 
by admiring friends, but fortunately it was destroyed. Brown- 
ing's attention was turned from Byron to Shelley by his acci- 
dental discovery in a bookstall of a volume of Shelley's Queen 
Mab. His admiration for Shelley was an influential element 
in his poetic education. 

Browning now entered upon the period of mental and spiritual 
struggle common to youth. In the outward aspects of life 
he remained obedient in all essentials to the good laws of use 
and custom. Underneath all his activities, however, ran a deep, 
restless current of revolt. He sought friendships outside of 
the home circle, at this time making the acquaintance of Alfred 
Donnett and of Eliza Flower, a charming woman nine years 
his senior. His friendships, his reading, and his aspirations all 
helped to broaden him. He caught the spirit of soaring toward 
higher aims, which dominated his later life and poetry. 

In 1833 his first poem, Pauline, was published privately, 
through the generosity of his aunt, who paid for its publication; 
but no copies were sold. This poem, which deals with the 
dangers that beset the soul of a poet, is important because it 
reveals to us Browning's own imaginary experience. Such 
passages as the following show us what an ardent and impetuous 
temperament the boy poet possessed. 

"I am made up of an intensest life 
Of a most clear idea of consciousness 
Of self, distinct from all its qualities, 
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers 

And to a principle of restlessness 

Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all." 

In 1835 Browning's second poem, Paracelsus, was published. 
This, too, met with little success; but William Macready, the 
great actor of the time, was so much pleased with it that he 



io INTRODUCTION 

urged Browning to write a play for him. The play, Strafford, 
founded on the tragic life of the minister of Charles I was pro- 
duced in 1837, but proved a failure. 

In the following year Browning sailed for Italy, which was 
destined to be the land where most of his best work was to be 
done. As the ship on which he sailed was passing Gibraltar, 
a wave of homesickness or home pride, as Edward Dowden pre- 
fers to call it, prompted the poem Home Thoughts, from Abroad. 
A few days later Browning wrote in pencil on the flyleaf of a 
book one of his most spirited short poems, telling of the glory 
of motion on a horse, — "How They Brought the Good News from 
Ghent to Aix." In 1848 he completed Sordello, which was 
begun years before. This was the third of the series of somewhat 
long and detailed studies of the soul of a poet. Although it 
was not universally popular, it marked the beginning of Brown- 
ing's success. During the remainder of his life he continued 
to write poems that met with increasing popular recognition 
and approval. 

With his return to England began the most precious experi- 
ence of Robert Browning's life. For some time he had been 
an enthusiastic admirer of the poetry of the distinguished 
Miss Barrett, who lived on Wimpole Street with her eccentric 
father and a younger sister. Miss Barrett was a delicate, bed- 
ridden woman, at this time in her fortieth year. Into the close- 
shuttered sickroom where her poems were written, a thin paper- 
covered volume called Bells and Pomegranates by Robert Brown- 
ing found its way. It was not the first of Browning's writings 
that she had read and from the beginning she had been an 
ardent admirer of his poetry. 

Their meeting, arranged after an interchange of letters, 
resulted in love at first sight and an almost immediate proposal 
of marriage. But there were difficulties in the way. In the 
first place, Elizabeth Barrett believed herself to be an incurable 
invalid, and in the second place, her father had forbidden her 
to marry. He was devotedly attached to his children and un- 
willing to share their love with others. In addition to these 



INTRODUCTION II 

two objections, Miss Barrett was six years Browning's senior. 
Browning, however, would recognize no barrier and after a 
brief struggle they were quietly married, in 1846, without the 
knowledge of Miss Barrett's father. Mr. Barrett never for- 
gave his daughter for this action. He refused to see her and 
returned her letters unread. 

Shortly after their marriage the Brownings left for Italy. 
There Mrs. Browning improved greatly in health, and a new 
life was opened up for the Brownings. They spent most of 
the time for the next fifteen years in Florence, in the famous 
old Casa Guidi, making occasional trips to various parts of 
Italy and to England, as well as to Paris. The story of their 
love and their life together is one of the most beautiful in 
history. They continued to work separately and to entertain 
a large and growing circle of distinguished literary friends. 

An idea of the wonder of their love is expressed by Mrs. 
Browning in her bonnets from the Portuguese published during 
their residence in Florence. Robert Browning's reply to these 
most exquisite of love poems is found in One Word More. 

Mrs. Browning died in 1861. Not long after this bereave- 
ment Browning returned to London, where he made his home. 
Here he formed many new friendships. He went much into 
society and became a great favorite in the cultured and literary 
circle of the city. He was always the center of interest at any 
function that he attended. 

At the time of his marriage the news was spread throughout 
London that the great poetess, Elizabeth Barrett, had married 
an obscure young literary man, Browning by name. As a matter 
of fact, during Mrs. Browning's lifetime her books sold by the 
thousands, while often her husband's works were in very small 
demand. This was a matter of great delight to Browning him- 
self, for during their life together, each reveled in the genius of 
the other and considered the other's work as of higher merit. 
With the publication of Dramatis Personae in 1864, however, 
Browning was enthusiastically received by the entire English- 
speaking world. His former work, which had been scorned 



12 INTRODUCTION 

and ridiculed by many at the time of publication, was revived 
and read with enjoyment. This fame, long delayed, was a joy 
tempered with sadness, because his wife, who had inspired his 
best work, had not lived to see its recognition. 

During the twenty years after the death of his wife, Brown- 
ing produced an unusual amount of poetry. In 1868 he began 
publishing his longest and most remarkable work, The Ring 
and the Book. 

The last summer of his life was spent in Asolo, the place 
which he had visited on his first trip to Italy in 1838, the scene 
of his Pippa Passes and of other poems. In the autumn he 
went on a visit to his son in Venice. There he contracted a 
cold, which caused his death on Dec. 12, 1889. Just before 
his death he received word from London that his last volume 
of poems had been published, and that the newspapers were 
giving it high praise. "That is very gratifying," he said. These 
were almost his last words. He was buried in the Poets' Corner 
of Westminster Abbey. 

Browning's Poetry 

Browning's idea of the aim of poetry is well expressed in the 
following lines from his earliest poem, Pauline: 

"And then thou saidst a perfect bard was one 
Who chronicled the stages of all life." 

This is Browning's definition of a poet. There is no mention 
of skill in rime or rhythm, or in the use of beautiful language. 
The perfect bard is one who sees all and who has the mind and 
soul to paint all for his readers. It is not that the rhythm, the 
beauty of phrasing, the appeal to the senses, the lofty ideal 
are left out of Browning's poetry. They are all there, for they 
form a part of "all life"; but these elements of life and of poetry 
are not the essentials. The universal poet must see all and feel 
all in himself. The poet must be an observer, not merely a 
versifier. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

In keeping with this belief, the larger part of Browning's 
own life was spent in the crowded city, where he could mingle 
with men, where he could walk the streets, visit the great market 
places and know the shopkeeper and the noble lady alike. Thus 
Browning's subject matter is taken from the very lives and souls 
of men and women. The trials, the agonies, the thrills, the 
perplexing problems of all men fill the storehouse of his mind. 
How faithfully he records these emotions can only be discovered 
by a reading of his poems. 

Browning not only sets a high standard for the poet; but 
also for the reader. He insists that the reader shall exercise 
to the fullest extent his dramatic imagination, that he must 
visualize the actions which necessarily accompany the words 
of the characters. He must follow the gesture, the changing 
facial expression of the person addressed. He must appreciate 
the setting in which the characters are placed. His intelligence 
must be alert and wide awake so that he may understand and 
follow the rapidly changing situations and may grasp the full 
significance of ideas that are sometimes only partially expressed. 
Browning is abrupt. His lines often read as if he were carrying 
on a conversation with the reader. Although he always in- 
cludes the vital words necessary to the thought, the transitions 
must often be supplied by the reader. 

In both subject matter and manner, Browning's method of 
approach is dramatic. His characters are represented in moments 
of mental crises. Andrea del Sarto shows Andrea in a mood of 
scorching self-analysis. For the first time, he has come to the 
realization of his failure to attain the highest. He sees his love 
for Lucrezia, fruitless, tragic, self-devastating, in its true light. 
What is left for him? Nothing but a continuation of the life 
which he has helped to create. The student who is interested 
in things dramatic, however, must not always be looking for 
the thrilling situation, the exciting moment; for Browning's 
interest is in mind, in deliberation, rather than in action. A 
glance at some of the titles of his volumes serves to show how 
essentially dramatic was Browning's attitude of mind, not 



14 INTRODUCTION 

only to the narrative but to the lyric as well. Various groups 
of poems were published under the following titles: Dramatic 
Lyrics, Dramatic Romances, Dramatic Idyls, and Dramatis 
Personae. His favorite method of character revelation was the 
dramatic monologue, in which the character speaks, unwittingly 
revealing his inner self. Even in the story poems, a speaker 
usually reveals his personality by his conversation. 

With all Browning's ruthless prying and spying into the 
secrets of the soul, he remains the foremost optimist of the 
nineteenth century. He laughs to scorn the pessimist who rails 
at the failure and the uselessness of human endeavor. He 
frankly distrusts the cynic who will not admit that life with all 
its sordidness and sorrow is worth while. He feels that to offset 
man's frailties there is upward striving; to dispel his despond- 
ency, there is hope and belief in immortality, and, most impor- 
tant of all, love. 

These two doctrines of love and belief in immortality are 
sung with triumphant and enduring praise throughout the 
poetry of Robert Browning. Love gives to the individual the 
greatest experiences of life. Love is the incentive for living 
and conquering obstacles. It prepares men for life, it enables 
them to bear loss and failure. Browning's own life illustrates 
this. His grief over the death of Mrs. Browning culminated 
in the accomplishment of his greatest work. Closely associated 
with this all-embracing love is his faith in personal immortality. 
He finds that this life is incomplete; that man's efforts and 
achievements are imperfect; and that nothing short of im- 
mortality will enable him to reach the goal of perfection. 

The popularity of Browning's poetry has suffered in the past 
by his so-called obscurity and by his choice of unusual historical 
settings. He draws upon all periods of the world's history and 
interprets all civilizations. Men of great scholarship, however, 
have devoted themselves to the task of annotating and ex- 
plaining away difficulties, so that the poems may be read with 
intelligence and appreciation. These men have done a great 
service. They have brought Browning's work from darkness 



INTRODUCTION 15 

into light and have revealed the deep significance of his thoughts. 
To-day young people are discovering in Browning's poetry an 
inspiration to heroism and endeavor and achievement. They 
are finding him essentially the poet of youth and of enthusiasm. 
The aim in this collection has been to select and group the 
poems with respect to their appeal to young students who are 
reading Browning for the first time. First come the rousing 
songs and the poems of stirring events, then descriptive poems, 
poems of love, character studies, and lastly reflective poems 
conveying the deeper spiritual truths of life. The volume 
closes with the Epilogue to Asolando, the last of Browning's 
poems, published on the day of his death. 



CAVALIER TUNES 

(See Note, page 149) 
I. MARCHING ALONG 



Kentish Sir Byng 1 stood for his King, 

Bidding the crop-headed 2 Parliament swing; 

And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, 

Marched them along, fifty-score strong, 5 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 

11 

God for King Charles ! Pym 3 and such carles 4 

To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous paries 5 

Cavaliers, up ! Lips from the cup, 

Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup 10 

Till you're — 

(Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 



ni 

Hampden 6 to hell, and his obsequies' knell 

Serve Hazelrig, 6 Fiennes, 6 and young Harry 6 as well! 15 

1 An imaginary nobleman. 

2 The Puritans wore their hair close-cropped. 

3 A leader of the Parliamentary party. 

4 Churls. 5 Speeches. 

6 Leaders of the Parliamentary party against King Charles I. 

Browning — 2 17 



18 CAVALIER TUNES 

England, good cheer! Rupert * is near! 
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here, 

(Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song? 

IV 

Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls 20 

To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles! 
Hold by the right, you double your might; 
So, onward to Nottingham, 2 fresh for the fight, 

(Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song! 25 



II. GIVE A ROUSE 



King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now, 
King Charles! 

n 

Who gave me the goods that went since? 5 

Who raised me the house that sank once? 
Who helped me to gold I spent since? 
Who found me in wine you drank once? 

(Chorus) King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 

King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 10 
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now, 
King Charles! 

1 Prince of Bavaria, a nephew of Charles I, who went to England to fight 
in his cause. 

2 The place where Charles I raised his standard in 1642. 



CAVALIER TUNES 19 

III 

To whom used my boy George quaff else, 

By the old fool's side that begot him? 

For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 15 

While Noll's ' damned troopers shot him? 

(Chorus) King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse: here's, in helVs despite now, 
King Charles! 20 

III. BOOT AND SADDLE 
I 

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! 
Rescue my castle before the hot day 
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, 

(Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! 

11 

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say; 5 

Many's the friend there, will listen and pray 
" God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay — 

(Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 

in 

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, 

Flouts Castle Brancepeth 2 the Roundheads' 3 array. 10 

Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay, 

(Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! " 

1 The nickname of Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Puritans. 

2 A castle to the rescue of which the Cavalier is riding. It is defended by 
his wife, Gertrude. 

3 A nickname applied to the Puritans because of their close-cropped hair. 



20 "HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS" 

IV 

Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay, 

Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay! 

I've better counselors; what counsel they? 15 

(Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 



"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM 
GHENT TO AIX" 1 



(See Note, page 149) 



I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; 

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; 

"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; 

"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; 

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 5 

And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 

11 

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace 

Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; 

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 

Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique 2 right, 10 

Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, 

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 



in 

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near 
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; 

1 The places mentioned in the poem are all between Ghent in Belgium 
and Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen, across the border in Germany. 

2 The pommel of the saddle. 



" HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS" 21 

At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; 15 

At DiifTeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; 
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, 
So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!" 

IV 

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, 

And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20 

To stare through the mist at us galloping past, 

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 

With resolute shoulders, each butting away 

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray; 



And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back 25 

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; 

And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that glance 

O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! 

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon 

His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 30 

VI 

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! 
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 
We'll remember at Aix" — for one heard the quick wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, 
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 35 

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 

VII 

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, 

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; 

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; 40 



2 2 "HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS" 

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, 
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!" 

VIII 

"How they'll greet us! " — and all in a moment his roan 

Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; 

And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 45 

Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, 1 

With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 

And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 



IX 

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall, 

Shook orl both my jack boots, let go belt and all, 50 

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 

Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer; 

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, 

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 



And all I remember is, — friends flocking round 55 

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; 

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, 

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. 60 

1 The city is assumed to have decided on self-destruction in preference 
to surrender. 



INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 23 

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 

(See Note, page 150) 



You know, we French stormed Ratisbon; 

A mile or so away, 
On a little mound, Napoleon 

Stood on our storming-day; 
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 5 

Legs wide, arms locked behind, 
As if to balance the prone brow 

Oppressive with its mind. 

11 

Just as perhaps he mused "My plans 

That soar, to earth may fall, 10 

Let once my army-leader Lannes l 

Waver at yonder wall," — 
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew 15 

Until he reached the mound. 

ill 

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
By just his horse's mane, a boy; 

You hardly could suspect — 20 

(So tight he kept his lips compressed, 

Scarce any blood came through) 
You looked twice ere you saw his breast 

Was all but shot in two. 

One of Napoleon's most distinguished marshals. 



24 HERVE RIEL 

IV 

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace 25 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The Marshal's in the market place, 

And you'll be there anon 
To see your flag-bird l flap his vans 2 

Where I, to heart's desire, 30 

Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans 

Soared up again like fire. 



The chief's eye flashed; but presently 

Softened itself, as sheathes 
A film the mother-eagle's eye 35 

When her bruised eaglet breathes; 
" You're wounded ! " "Nay," the soldier's pride 

Touched to the quick, he said: 
" I'm killed, Sire ! " And his chief beside, 

Smiling the boy fell dead. 40 



HERVE RIEL 

(See Note, page 150) 



On the sea and at the Hogue, 3 sixteen hundred ninety-two, 
Did the English fight the French — woe to France! 

And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, 

Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, 
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo 4 on the Ranee, 5 

With the English fleet in view. 

1 Eagle. 2 Wings. 3 A cape on the coast of Normandy. 

4 A seaport at the mouth of the river Ranee, on the northern coast of 
France. 



HERVE RIEL 25 

II 

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase; 
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville, 1 
Close on him fled, great and small, 

Twenty- two good ships in all; 10 

And they signaled to the place 
"Help the winners of a race! 

Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick — or, 

quicker still, 
Here's the English can and will!" 

in 

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board; 15 
"Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" 
laughed they; 
"Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and 

scored, 
Shall the Formidable here with her twelve and eighty guns 

Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, 
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, 20 
And with flow at full beside? 

Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 
Reach the mooring? Rather say, 
While rock stands or water runs, 
Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 25 

iv 

Then was called a council straight. 

Brief and bitter the debate: 

"Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in 

tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, 
For a prize to Plymouth Sound? 30 

Better run the ships aground!" 

1 The commander of the French squadron. 



26 HERVE RIEL 

(Ended Damfreville his speech). 
"Not a minute more to wait! 

Let the Captains all and each 

Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach! 35 
France must undergo her fate. 

v 

"Give the word!" But no such word 
Was ever spoke or heard; 

For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these 
— A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate — first, second, third?4o 

No such man of mark, and meet 

With his betters to compete; 

But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville x for the fleet, 
A poor coasting-pilot he, Herve Riel the Croisickese. 2 

VI 

And, "What mockery or malice have we here? " cries Herve Riel; 

"Are you mad, you Malouins? 3 Are you cowards, fools, or 

rogues? 46 

Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell 

On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 

'Twixt the offing here and Greve 4 where the river disem- 
bogues? 5 
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? 50 
Morn and eve, night and day, 
Have I piloted your bay, 
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. 6 
Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty 
Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's 
away! 55 

1 The French admiral. 

2 An inhabitant of Le Croisic, a fishing village in Brittany, where Herve 
Riel dwelt. 3 Inhabitants of St. Malo. 

4 The sands between St. Malo and Mont St. Michel. 

5 Empties. 6 A fortified town on the mainland. 



HERVE RIEL 27 

Only let me lead the line, 

Have the biggest ship to steer, 
Get this Formidable clear, 
Make the others follow mine, 

And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, 60 
Right to Solidor past Greve, 

And there lay them safe and sound; 
And if one ship misbehave, 

— Keel so much as grate the ground, 
Why, I've nothing but my life, — here's my head! " cries Herve 
Riel. 65 

VII 

Not a minute more to wait. 
"Steer us in, then, small and great! 

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron ! " cried its chief. 
Captains, give the sailor place! 

He is Admiral, in brief. 70 

Still the north wind, by God's grace! 
See the noble fellow's face 
As the big ship, with a bound, 
Clears the entry like a hound, 
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound! 

See, safe through shoal and rock, 76 

How they follow in a flock, 
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, 

Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past, 80 

All are harbored to the last, 

And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!" — sure as fate 
Up the English come — too late ! 

vni 

So, the storm subsides to calm; 

They see the green trees wave 85 

On the heights o'erlooking Greve. 
Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 



28 HERVE RIEL 

" Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the English rake the bay, 
Gnash their teeth and glare askance 90 

As they cannonade away! 
'Neath rampired * Solidor pleasant riding on the Ranee!" 
How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance! 
Out burst all with one accord, 

"This is Paradise for Hell! 95 

Let France, let France's King 

Thank the man that did the thing!" 
What a shout, and all one word, 

"HerveRiel!" 
As he stepped in front once more, 100 

Not a symptom of surprise 

In the frank blue Breton eyes, 
Just the same man as before. 

IX 

Then said Damfreville, "My friend, 

I must speak out at the end, 105 

Though I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips; 
You have saved the King his ships, 

You must name your own reward. 
'Faith, our sun was near eclipse! no 

Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 
Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville." 



Then a beam of fun outbroke 

On the bearded mouth that spoke, 115 

As the honest heart laughed through 

Those frank eyes of Breton blue. 

1 Ramparted. 



HERVE RIEL 20 

F Since I needs must say my say, 

Since on board the duty's done, 

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run? — 
Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 121 

Since the others go ashore — 
Come ! A good whole holiday ! 

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!" 
That he asked and that he got, — nothing more. 125 

XI 

Name and deed alike are lost; 
Not a pillar nor a post 

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; 
Not a head in white and black 

On a single fishing-smack, 130 

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack 

All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the 
bell. 1 
Go to Paris; rank on rank 

Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
On the Louvre, 2 face and flank ! 135 

You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. 
So, for better and for worse, 
Herve Riel, accept my verse! 
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the Belle 
Aurore! 140 

1 Won the victory. 

2 The famous art gallery of Paris, where the heroes' portraits are dis- 
played. 



30 PHEIDIPPIDES 

PHEIDIPPIDES 

XatpeTC, viKiOfJLCV l 

(See Note, page 151) 

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock! 
Gods of my birthplace, demons 2 and heroes, honor to all ! 
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, coequal in praise 
— Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the aegis and spear! 3 
Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, 4 praised be your peer, 5 
Now, henceforth and forever, — O latest to whom I upraise 
Hand and heart and voice ! For Athens, leave pasture and flock ! 
Present to help, potent to save, Pan — patron I call! 

Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, 5 see, I return! 

See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no specter that speaks! 10 

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and 

you, 
"Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid! 
Persia has come, we are here, where is She? " Your command 

I obeyed, 
Ran and raced; like stubble, some field which a fire runs through, 
Was the space between city and city; two days, two nights 

did I burn 15 

Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks. 

Into their midst I broke; breath served but for " Persia has come! 
Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and earth. 6 
Razed to the ground is Eretria — but Athens, shall Athens sink, 
Drop into dust and die — the flower of Hellas utterly die, 20 

1 "Rejoice, we conquer." 2 Lesser divinities, guardian spirits. 

3 The aegis, or shield, and the spear were the emblems of Athene. 

4 Artemis was represented with a bow and with buskined legs, as a hunter. 

5 The grasshopper, an Athenian symbol of the right of Athens to the 
territory which she occupied. 6 Symbols of submission. 



PHEIDIPPIDES 31 

Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the 

stander-by? 
Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch o'er 

destruction's brink? 
How, — when? No care for my limbs ! — there's lightning in 

all and some — 
Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give it birth!" 

my Athens — Sparta love thee? Did Sparta respond? 25 
Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust, 
Malice, — each eye of her gave me its glitter of gratified hate ! 
Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for excuses. I stood 
Quivering, — the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an inch 

from dry wood. 
"Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they debate? 30 
Thunder, thou Zeus ! Athene, are Spartans a quarry beyond 
Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang them 'Ye 

must'!" 

No bolt launched from Olumpos! Lo, their answer at last! 
"Has Persia come, — does Athens ask aid, — may Sparta be- 
friend? 
Nowise precipitate judgment — too weighty the issue at stake [35 
Count we no time lost time which lags through respect to the 

gods! 
Ponder that precept of old, ' No warfare, whatever the odds 
In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take 
Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast. 
Athens must wait, patient as we — who judgment suspend." 40 

Athens, — except for that sparkle, — thy name, I had mold- 

ered to ash! 
That sent a blaze through my blood; off, off and away was I 

back; 
Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false and the vile ! 



32 PHEIDIPPIDES 

Yet "O gods of my land!" I cried, as each hillock and plain, 
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them again, 45 ; 
"Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we paid you 

erewhile? 
Vain was the filleted victim, 1 the fulsome libation ! 2 Too rash 
Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack! 

"Oak and olive and bay, 3 — I bid you cease to enwreathe 
Brows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Persian's foot, 50 
You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn a 

slave! 
Rather I hail thee, Parnes, 4 — trust to thy wild waste tract! 
Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked 
My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave 
No deity deigns to drape with verdure? — at least I can breathe, 
Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the mute!" 56 

Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; 
Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar 
Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. 
Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across. 60 
"Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse? 5 
Athens to aid? Though the dive were through Erebos, 6 thus 

I obey — 
Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge 
Better!" — when — ha! what was it I came on, of wonders 

that are? 

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he — majestical Pan! 65 

Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned his hoof; 

1 The animals offered up for sacrifice were usually adorned with bands 
or fillets of ribbon. 

2 The abundant offering of wine or oil made to the gods. 

3 Wreaths of oak for Zeus, of olive for Athene, and of bay for Phoebus 
Apollo. 

4 Mountains west of Athens. 6 Ditch. 8 Hades. 



PHEIDIPPIDES $3 

All the great god was good in the eyes grave-kindly — the curl 
Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe 
As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs l grand I saw. 
"Halt, Pheidippides! " — halt I did, my brain of a whirl — 70 
" Hither to me! Why pale in my presence? " he gracious began; 
"How is it, — Athens, only in Hellas, holds me aloof? 

"Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no feast! 
Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more helpful of old? 
Ay, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan, trust me! 75 
Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have faith 
In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens, 'The Goat-God 

saith: 
When Persia — so much as strews not the soil — is cast in 

the sea, 
Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your most and 

least, 
Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, 2 made one cause with the free 

and the bold!' 80 

"Say Pan saith: 'Let this, foreshowing the place, be the 

pledge!'" 
(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear 
— Fennel 3 — I grasped it a-tremble with dew — whatever it 

bode) 
"While, as for thee" . . . But enough! He was gone. If I 

ran hitherto — 
Be sure that, the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, but flew. 85 
Parnes to Athens — earth no more, the air was my road; 
Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on the razor's 

edge! 
Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon rare! 

1 Pan was represented as having the legs of a goat. 

2 Thigh encased in armor. 

3 The Greek name for fennel was Marathon; hence the sprig was prophetic 
of the battlefield where the victory was won. 

Browning. — 3 



34 PHEIDIPPIDES 

Then spoke Miltiades. 1 "And thee, best runner of Greece, 

Whose limbs did duty indeed, — what gift is promised thy- 
self? 90 

Tell it us straightway, — Athens the mother demands of her 
son!" 

Rosily blushed the youth; he paused; but, lifting at length 

His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of 
his strength 

Into the utterance — "Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast 
done 

Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee re- 
lease 95 

From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!' 

"I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most to my mind! 
Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel may 

grow, — 
Pound — Pan helping us — Persia to dust, and, under the deep, 
Whelm her away forever; and then, — no Athens to save, — 100 
Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave, — 
Hie to my house and home; and, when my children shall creep 
Close to my knees, — recount how the God was awful yet kind, 
Promised their sire reward to the full — rewarding him — so!" 

Unforeseeing one ! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day. 105 

So, when Persia was dust, all cried "To Acropolis! 2 

Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due! 

' Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!" He flung down his 

shield, 
Ran like fire once more; and the space 'twixt the fennel field 
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through, 
Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through 

clay, in 

Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — the bliss! 

1 The Greek general at the battle of Marathon. 2 The citadel of Athens. 



TRAY 35 

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute 
Is still "Rejoice!" — his word which brought rejoicing indeed. 
So is Pheidippides happy forever, — the noble strong man 115 
Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god 

loved so well; 
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered 

to tell 

Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began, 
So to end gloriously — once to shout, thereafter be mute: 
"Athens is saved!" — Pheidippides dies in the shout for his 

meed. . 120 

TRAY 

(See Note, page 152) 



Sing me a hero ! Quench my thirst 
Of soul, ye bards! 

Quoth Bard the first: 
" Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don 
His helm and eke his habergeon " . . . 
Sir Olaf and his bard ! 5 

11 

"That sin-scathed brow " (quoth Bard the second), 

"That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned 

My hero to some steep, beneath 

Which precipice smiled tempting death" . . . 

You too without your host have reckoned! 10 

in 

"A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!) 

"Sat on a quay's edge; like a bird 

Sang to herself at careless play, 

And fell into the stream. 'Dismay! 

Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred. 15 



36 TRA Y 

IV 

"Bystanders reason, think of wives 

And children ere they risk their lives. 

Over the balustrade has bounced 

A mere instinctive dog, and pounced 

Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives! 20 



"'Up he comes with the child, see, tight 

In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite 

A depth of ten feet — twelve, I bet! 

Good dog ! What, off again? There's yet 

Another child to save? All right! 25 

VI 

"'How strange we saw no other fall! 

It's instinct in the animal. 

Good dog! But he's a long while under; 

If he got drowned I should not wonder — 

Strong current, that against the wall! 30 

VII 

"'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time 

What may the thing be? Well, that's prime! 

Now, did you ever? Reason reigns 

In man alone, since all Tray's pains 

Have fished — the child's doll from the slime!' 35 



VIII 



" And so, amid the laughter gay, 

Trotted my hero off, — old Tray, — 

Till somebody, prerogatived 

With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived, 

His brain would show us, I should say, 40 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAM ELI N 37 

IX 

"'John, go and catch — or, if needs be, 

Purchase — that animal for me! 

By vivisection, at expense 

Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence, 

How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'" 45 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 
A CHILD'S STORY 

Written for, and inscribed to, W. M. the Younger 
(See Note, page 152) 



Hamelin Town's in Brunswick, 

By famous Hanover city; 
The river Weser, deep and wide, 
Washes its wall on the southern side; 
A pleasanter spot you never spied; 

But, when begins my ditty, 
Almost five hundred years ago, 
To see the townsfolk suffer so 

From vermin, was a pity. 



11 

Rats! 10 

They fought the dogs and killed the cats, 

And bit the babies in the cradles, 
And ate the cheeses out of the vats, 

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, 
Split open the kegs of salted sprats, 15 

Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, 



$8 THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 

And even spoiled the women's chats 

By drowning their speaking 

With shrieking and squeaking 
In fifty different sharps and flats. 20 

in 

At last the people in a body 

To the Town Hall came flocking. 
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy; 
And as for our Corporation — shocking 
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 25 

For dolts that can't or won't determine 
What's best to rid us of our vermin ! 
You hope, because you're old and obese, 
To find in the furry civic robe ease? 
Rouse up, sirs ! Give your brains a racking 30 

To find the remedy we're lacking, 
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" 
At this the Mayor and Corporation 
Quaked with a mighty consternation. 

IV 

An hour they sat in council; 35 

At length the Mayor broke silence: 
" For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, 

I wish I were a mile hence! 
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain — 
I'm sure my poor head aches again, 40 

I've scratched it so, and all in vain. 
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" 
Just as he said this, what should hap 
At the chamber-door but a gentle tap? 
"Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" 45 

(With the Corporation as he sat, 
Looking little though wondrous fat; 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 39 

Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister 

Than a too-long-opened oyster, 

Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 50 

For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) 

"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? 

Anything like the sound of a rat 

Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!" 



"Come in!" — the Mayor cried, looking bigger; 55 

And in did come the strangest figure ! 

His queer long coat from heel to head 

Was half of yellow and half of red, 

And he himself was tall and thin, 

With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 

And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, 

No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, 

But lips where smiles went out and in; 

There was no guessing his kith and kin; 

And nobody could enough admire 65 

The tall man and his quaint attire. 

Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, 

Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, 

Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!" 

VI 

He advanced to the council- table; 70 

And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able, 

By means of a secret charm, to draw 

All creatures living beneath the sun, 

That creep or swim or fly or run, 

After me so as you never saw ! 75 

And I chiefly use my charm 

On creatures that do people harm, 

The mole and toad and newt and viper; 

And people call me the Pied Piper." 



40 THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 

(And here they noticed round his neck 80 

A scarf of red and yellow stripe, 

To match with his coat of the self-same check; 

And at the scarf's end hung a pipe; 

And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying 

As if impatient to be playing 85 

Upon this pipe, as low it dangled 

Over his vesture so old-fangled.) 

" Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, 

In Tartary I freed the Cham, 1 

Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; • 90 

I eased in Asia the Nizam 2 

Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats; 

And as for what your brain bewilders, 

If I can rid your town of rats 

Will you give me a thousand guilders? " 95 

"One? fifty thousand!" — was the exclamation 

Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. 



VII 

Into the street the Piper stepped, 

Smiling first a little smile, 
As if he knew what magic slept 100 

In his quiet pipe the while; 
Then, like a musical adept, 
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, 
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, 
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled; 105 

And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, 
You heard as if an army muttered; 
And the muttering grew to a grumbling; 
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; 

1 The title of the ruler of Tartary, in Central Asia, usually spelled 
Khan. 

2 The title of the ruler of Hyderabad in India. 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAM ELI N 41 

And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. no 

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, 
Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, 
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, 

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, 
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, 115 

Families by tens and dozens, 
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives — 
Followed the Piper for their lives. 
From street to street he piped advancing, 
And step for step they followed dancing, 120 

Until they came to the river Weser, 
Wherein all plunged and perished! 
— Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, 1 
Swam across and lived to carry 

(As he, the manuscript he cherished) 125 

To Rat-land home his commentary. 
Which was, " At the first shrill notes of the pipe, 
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, 
And putting apples, wondrous ripe, 
Into a cider press's gripe; 13° 

And a moving away of pickle- tub-boards, 
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, 
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, 
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks; 
And it seemed as if a voice 13 5 

(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery 
Is breathed) called out, 'Oh rats, rejoice! 
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! 
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, 2 
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!' 14° 

And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, 
All ready staved, like a great sun shone 
Glorious scarce an inch before me, 

1 See Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act I, scene II, lines 100-102. 

2 Refreshment. 



42 THE PIED PIPER OF II AM ELI N 

Just as me thought it said, 'Come, bore me!' 

— I found the Weser rolling o'er me." 145 



VIII 

You should have heard the Hamelin people 

Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. 

"Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles, 

Poke out the nests and block up the holes! 

Consult with carpenters and builders, 150 

And leave in our town not even a trace 

Of the rats!" — when suddenly, up the face 

Of the Piper perked in the market place, 

With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!" 



IX 

A thousand guilders ! The Mayor looked blue; 155 

So did the Corporation too. 

For council dinners made rare havoc 

With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; 

And half the money would replenish 

Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. 160 

To pay this sum to a wandering fellow 

With a gypsy coat of red and yellow ! 

"Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink, 

"Our business was done at the river's brink; 

We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, 165 

And what's dead can't come to life, I think. 

So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink 
From the duty of giving you something for drink, 
And a matter of money to put in your poke; 
But as for the guilders, what we spoke 170 

Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. 
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. 
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!" 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAM ELI N 43 

X 

The Piper's face fell and he cried, 

" No trifling! I can't wait, beside! 175 

I've promised to visit by dinner time 

Bagdat, and accept the prime * 

Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, 

For having left, in the Caliph's 2 kitchen, 

Of a nest of scorpions no survivor; 180 

With him I proved no bargain driver, 

With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! 

And folks who put me in a passion 

May find me pipe after another fashion." 

XI 

"How?" cried the Mayor, "d' ye think I brook 185 

Being worse treated than a Cook? 

Insulted by a lazy ribald 

With idle pipe and vesture piebald? 

You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, 

Blow your pipe there till you burst!" 190 

XII 

Once more he stepped into the street, 

And to his lips again 
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; 

And ere he blew three notes (such sweet 
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning 195 

Never gave the enraptured air) 
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling 
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling; 
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, 
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, 200 
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering, 
Out came the children running. 
1 The first portion. 2 Sultan of Turkey. 



44 THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 

All the little boys and girls, 

With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, 

And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, 205 

Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after 

The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. 



XIII 

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood 

As if they were changed into blocks of wood, 

Unable to move a step, or cry 210 

To the children merrily skipping by, 

— Could only follow with the eye 

That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. 

But how the Mayor was on the rack, 

And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, 215 

As the Piper turned from the High Street 

To where the Weser rolled its waters 

Right in the way of their sons and daughters! 

However, he turned from South to West, 

And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, 220 

And after him the children pressed; 

Great was the joy in every breast. 

"He never can cross that mighty top! 

He's forced to let the piping drop, 

And we shall see our children stop!" 225 

When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side, 

A wondrous portal opened wide, 

As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; 

And the Piper advanced and the children followed, 

And when all were in to the very last, 230 

The door in the mountain-side shut fast. 

Did I say all? No ! One was lame, 

And could not dance the whole of the way; 

And in after years, if you would blame 

His sadness, he was used to say, — 235 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAM ELI N 45 

" It's dull in our town since my playmates left ! 

I can't forget that I'm bereft 

Of all the pleasant sights they see, 

Which the Piper also promised me. 

For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, 240 

Joining the town and just at hand, 

Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew 

And flowers put forth a fairer hue, 

And everything was strange and new; 

The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, 245 

And their dogs outran our fallow deer, 

And honeybees had lost their stings, 

And horses were born with eagles' wings; 

And just as I became assured 

My lame foot would be speedily cured, 250 

The music stopped and I stood still, 

And found myself outside the hill, 

Left alone against my will, 

To go now limping as before, 

And never hear of that country more!" 255 

XIV 

Alas, alas for Hamelin! 

There came into many a burgher's pate 

A text which says that heaven's gate 

Opes to the rich at as easy rate 
As the needle's eye takes a camel in! 260 

The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South, 
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth, 

Wherever it was men's lot to find him, 
Silver and gold to his heart's content, 
If he'd only return the way he went, 265 

And bring the children behind him. 
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor, 
And Piper and dancers were gone forever, 
They made a decree that lawyers never 



46 THE PIED PIPER OF II AM ELI N 

Should think their records dated duly 
If, after the day of the month and year, 
These words did not as well appear, 
"And so long after what happened here 

On the Twenty-second of July, 
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six;" 
And the better in memory to fix 
The place of the children's last retreat, 
They called it the Pied Piper's Street — 
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor 
Was sure for the future to lose his labor. j 

Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern 

To shock with mirth a street so solemn; 
But opposite the place of the cavern 

They wrote the story on a column, 
And on the great church window painted : 

The same, to make the world acquainted 
How their children were stolen away, 
And there it stands to this very day. 
And I must not omit to say 

That in Transylvania there's a tribe : 

Of alien people who ascribe 
The outlandish ways and dress 
On which their neighbors lay such stress, 
To their fathers and mothers having risen 
Out of some subterraneous prison : 

Into which they were trapanned 
Long time ago in a mighty band 
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, 
But how or why, they don't understand. 

xv 

So, Willy, let me and you be wipers ; 

Of scores out with all men — especially pipers! 
And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, 
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise ! 



THE TWINS 47 

THE TWINS 

"Give" and " Its hall-be- given-unto-you" 
(See Note, page 152) 

I 

Grand rough old Martin Luther 

Bloomed fables — flowers on furze, 
The better the uncouther. 

Do roses stick like burrs? 

11 

A beggar asked an alms 5 

One day at an abbey door, 
Said Luther; but, seized with qualms, 

The Abbot replied, "We're poor! 

in 

"Poor, who had plenty once, 

When gifts fell thick as rain; 10 

But they give us naught, for the nonce, 

And how should we give again?" 

IV 

Then the beggar, "See your sins! 

Of old, unless I err, 
Ye had brothers* for inmates, twins, 15 

Date and Dabitur. 



"While Date was in good case 

Dabitur flourished too; 
For Dabitur's lenten face 

No wonder if Date rue. 20 



48 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 

VI 

" Would ye retrieve the one? 

Try and make plump the other! 
When Date's penance is done, 

Dabitur helps his brother. 



VII 



"Only, beware relapse!" 
The Abbot hung his head. 

This beggar might be perhaps 
An angel, Luther said. 



THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 

(See Note, page 153) 

Morning, evening, noon and night, 
"Praise God!" sang Theocrite. 

Then to his poor trade he turned, 
Whereby the daily meal was earned. 

Hard he labored, long and well; 
O'er his work the boy's curls fell. 

But ever, at each period, 

He stopped and sang, "Praise God!" 

Then back again his curls he threw, 
And cheerful turned to work anew. 

Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done; 
I doubt not thou art heard, my son; 

"As well as if thy voice to-day 

Were praising God, the Pope's great way. 



THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 49 

"This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 15 

Praises God from Peter's dome." 



Said Theocrite, "Would God that I 

Might praise Him, that great way, and die!" 

Night passed, day shone, 

And Theocrite was gone. 20 

With God a day endures alway, 
A thousand years are but a day. 

God said in heaven, "Nor day nor night 
Now brings the voice of my delight." 

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, 25 

Spread his wings and sank to earth; 

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, 

Lived there, and played the craftsman well; 

And morning, evening, noon, and night, 

Praised God in place of Theocrite. 30 

And from a boy, to youth he grew; 
The man put off the stripling's hue. 

The man matured and fell away 
Into the season of decay; 

And ever o'er the trade he bent, 35 

And ever lived on earth content. 

(He did God's will; to him, all one 
If on the earth or in the sun.) 

Browning — 4 



50 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 

God said, " A praise is in mine ear; 
There is no doubt in it, no fear. 

"So sing old worlds, and so 

New worlds that from my footstool go. 

"Clearer loves sound other ways; 
I miss my little human praise." 

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 
The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 

'Twas Easter Day; he flew to Rome, 
And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 

In the tiring-room close by 
The great outer gallery, 

With his holy vestments dight, 1 
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite; 

And all his past career 
Came back upon him clear, 

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 
Till on his life the sickness weighed; 

And in his cell, when death drew near, 
An angel in a dream brought cheer; 

And rising from the sickness drear, 
He grew a priest, and now stood here. 

To the East with praise he turned, 
And on his sight the angel burned. 

1 Clothed. 



THE PATRIOT 51 

"I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, 
And set thee here; I did not well. 

"Vainly I left my angel sphere, 65 

Vain was thy dream of many a year. 

"Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped — 
Creation's chorus stopped! 

"Go back and praise again 

The early way, while I remain. 7° 

"With that weak voice of our disdain, 
Take up creation's pausing strain. 

Back to the cell and poor employ; 
Resume the craftsman and the boy!" 

Theocrite grew old at home; 75 

A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. 

One vanished as the other died; 
They sought God side by side. 



THE PATRIOT 

An Old Story 
(See Note, page 153) 



It was roses, roses all the way, 

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad; 
The house roofs seemed to heave and sway, 

The church spires flamed, such flags they had, 
A year ago on this very day. 



52 THE PATRIOT 

II 

The air broke into a mist with bells, 

The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. 

Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels — 
But give me your sun from yonder skies!" 

They had answered, "And afterward, what else?" 10 

in 

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 

To give it my loving friends to keep! 
Naught man could do, have I left undone; 

And you see my harvest, what I reap 
This very day, now a year is run. 15 

iv 

There's nobody on the housetops now — 
Just a palsied few at the windows set; 

For the best of the sight is, all allow, 
At the Shambles' Gate — or, better yet, 

By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 20 



I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 

A rope cuts both my wrists behind; 
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 

For they fling, whoever has a mind, 
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 25 

VI 

Thus I entered, and thus I go! 

In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. 
"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 

Me?" — God might question; now instead, 
'Tis God shall repay; I am safer so. 30 



MY LAST DUCHESS 53 

MY LAST DUCHESS 

Ferrara * 
(See Note, page 153) 

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 

Looking as if she were alive. I call 

That piece a wonder, now. Fra Pandolf's 2 hands 

Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 

Will't please you sit and look at her? I said 5 

"Fra Pandolf " by design, for never read 

Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 

The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 

But to myself they turned (since none puts by 

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10 

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 

How such a glance came there; so, not the first 

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not 

Her husband's presence only, called that spot 

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek; perhaps 15 

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps 

Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint 

Must never hope to reproduce the faint 

Half-flush that dies along her throat." Such stuff 

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20 

For calling up that spot of joy. She had 

A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad, 

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er 

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 

Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast, 25 

The dropping of the daylight in the West, 

1 A city on the Adriatic, whose dukes were noted patrons of art. 
2 An imaginary artist. 



54 MY LAST DUCHESS 

The bough of cherries some officious fool 

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 

She rode with round the terrace — all and each 

Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30 

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but thanked 

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame 

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 35 

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will 

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this 

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, 

Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let 

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40 

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 

— E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose 

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, 

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without 

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands *; 45 

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 

As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet 

The company below, then. I repeat, 

The Count your master's known munificence 

Is ample warrant that no just pretense 50 

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; 

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go 

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune 2 though, 

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55 

Which Claus of Innsbruck 3 cast in bronze for me ! 

1 When questioned as to the nature of the "commands" Browning usually- 
evaded an answer; but once he said "I meant he had her put to death." 

2 A work of art to which the duke calls attention. 

3 An imaginary artist. 



UP AT A VILLA— DOWN IN THE CITY 55 

UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 

As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality 
(See Note, page 154) 



Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, 
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square; 
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! 

11 

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least! 
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast; 5 

While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast. 

in 

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull 
Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's skull, 
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull! 
— I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool. 

IV 

But the city, oh the city — the square with the houses! Why? 
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take 

the eye! 12 

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry; 
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries 

by; 
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets 

high; 15 

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly. 



56 UP AT A VILLA— DOWN IN THE CITY 

V 

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off 

the heights; 
You've the brown plowed land before, where the oxen steam 

and wheeze, 
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees. 20 



VI 

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; 

In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns. 

'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers 

well, 
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell 
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and 

sell. 25 

VII 

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and 

splash! 
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foambows 

flash 
On the horses with curling fish tails, that prance and paddle 

and pash 
Round the lady atop in her conch — fifty gazers do not abash, 
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a 

sort of sash. 30 

VIII 

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger, 
Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger. 
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle, 
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a- tingle. 
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala l is shrill, 35 

1 Locust. 



UP AT A VILLA— DOWN IN THE CITY 57 

And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs 

on the hill. 
Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months of the fever 

and chill. 

IX 

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells 

begin; 
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in. 
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. 40 
By and by there's the traveling doctor gives pills, lets blood, 

draws teeth; 
Or the Pulcinello trumpet * breaks up the market beneath. 
At the post office such a scene-picture — the new play, piping hot! 
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were 

shot. 
Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, 45 
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law 

of the Duke's! 
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so, 
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero, 2 
"And moreover," (the sonnet goes riming,) "the skirts of Saint 

Paul has reached, 3 
Having preached us those six Lent lectures more unctuous than 

ever he preached." 50 

Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession ! 4 our Lady borne 

smiling and smart 
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords 4 stuck 

in her heart! 
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, lootle-te-tootle the fife; 
No keeping one's haunches still; it's the greatest pleasure in life. 

1 Punch and Judy show announced by a trumpet. 

2 Who combines the qualities of the great writers, Dante, Boccacio and 
Petrarch, of the theologian St. Jerome, and of Cicero, the famous orator. 

3 Is almost as great a preacher as St. Paul. 

4 The procession bearing the image of the Virgin through the streets on 
Holy Thursday. The seven swords represent her seven sorrows. 



5§ "DE GUSTIBUS-" 



X 



But bless you, it's dear — it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the 
rate. - - , 

They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays; 

passing the gate 1 
It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! 
Beggars can scarcely be choosers; but still — ah, the pity, 

the pity! 
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls 

and sandals, 

And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow 
candles; 6o 

One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with 
handles, 

And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better pre- 
vention of scandals. 

Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife. 

Oh, a day in the city square, there is no such pleasure in life! 



"DE GUSTIBUS— " 2 

(See Note, page 155) 

I 

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees, 

(If our loves remain) 

In an English lane, 
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. 
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice — 5 

A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, 

Making love, say, — 

The happier they! 

1 City taxes on country produce. 

2 From the Latin proverb, De gustibus turn est disputandum. "There is no 
disputing about tastes." 



"DE GUSTIBUS-" 59 

Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, 

And let them pass, as they will too soon, 10 

With the beanflower's boon, 

And the blackbird's tune, 

And May, and June ! 

11 

What I love best in all the world 

Is a castle, precipice-encurled, 15 

In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine. 

Or look for me, old fellow of mine, 

(If I get my head from out the mouth 

0' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, 

And come again to the land of lands) — 20 

In a seaside house to the farther South, 

Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, 

And one sharp tree — 'tis a cypress — stands, 

By the many hundred years red-rusted, 

Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'er crusted 25 

My sentinel to guard the sands 

To the water's edge. For, what expands 

Before the house, but the great opaque 

Blue breadth of sea without a break? 

While, in the house, forever crumbles 30 

Some fragment of the frescoed walls, 

From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. 

A girl barefooted brings, and tumbles 

Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons, 

And says there's news to-day — the king 35 

Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing, 1 

Goes with his Bourbon 2 arm in a sling. 

— She hopes they have not caught the felons. 

Italy, my Italy! 

Queen Mary's saying serves for me — 40 

1 The right wing of a bird; hence the right arm. 

2 A royal house whose members at one time occupied the throne of Naples. 



60 THE LOST LEADER 

(When fortune's malice 

Lost her, Calais) l 
Open my heart and you will see 
Graved inside of it, "Italy." 

Such lovers old are I and she: 45 

So it always was, so shall ever be! 

THE LOST LEADER 

(See Note, page 155) 

I 

Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 

Lost all the others she lets us devote; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver; 5 

So much was theirs who so little allowed. 
How all our copper had gone for his service! 

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 10 

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live and to die! 
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from their graves! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 15 

— He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! 

11 

We shall march prospering, — not through his presence; 

Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre; 
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 20 

1 The loss of Calais (1558), in the war with France, was so greatly re- 
gretted by Mary Tudor, Queen of England, that she declared that at her 
death the word "Calais" would be found written on her heart. 



MEMORABILIA 61 

Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, 
One more devils' triumph and sorrow for angels, 

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! 
Life's night begins; let him never come back to us! 25 

There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain, 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 

Never glad confident morning again ! 
Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike gallantly, 

Menace our heart ere we master his own; 30 

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, 

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 



MEMORABILIA 

(See Note, page 156) 



Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 
And did he stop and speak to you, 

And did you speak to him again? 
How strange it seems, and new! 



11 



But you were living before that, 
And also you are living after; 

And the memory I started at — 
My starting moves your laughter! 



in 



I crossed a moor, with a name of its own 

And a certain use in the world, no doubt 10 

Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 
'Mid the blank miles round about. 



62 EVELYN HOPE 

IV 



For there I picked up on the heather 

And there I put inside my breast 
A molted feather, an eagle feather! 15 

Well, I forget the rest. 



EVELYN HOPE 

(See Note, page 156) 



Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her bookshelf, this her bed; 

She plucked that piece of geranium flower, 
Beginning to die, too, in the glass 5 

Little has yet been changed, I think; 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 

Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. 

11 

Sixteen years old when she died! 

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; 10 

It was not her time to love; beside, 

Her life had many a hope and aim, 
Duties enough and little cares, 

And now was quiet, now astir, 
Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 15 

And the sweet white brow is all of her. 

in 

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? 

What, your soul was pure and true, 
The good stars met in your horoscope, 

Made you of spirit, fire, and dew — 20 



EVELYN HOPE 63 

And, just because I was thrice as old 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 

Each was naught to each, must I be told? 
We were fellow mortals, naught beside? 

IV 

No, indeed! for God above 25 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
And creates the love to reward the love. 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake! 
Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few; 30 

Much is to learn, much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 



But the time will come, at last it will, 

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
In the lower earth, in the years long still, 35 

That body and soul so pure and gay? 
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red — 
And what you would do with me, in fine, 

In the new life come in the old one's stead. 40 



VI 

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times, 
Gained me the gains of various men, 

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; 
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 45 

Either I missed or itself missed me; 
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! 

What is the issue? let us see! 



64 LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 

VII 

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 

My heart seemed full as it could hold; 50 

There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, 

And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold. 
So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep ; 

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
There, that is our secret; go to sleep! 55 

You will wake, and remember, and understand. 



LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 

(See Note, page 157) 



Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles 

Miles and miles 
On the solitary pastures where our sheep 

Half asleep 
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop 5 

As they crop — 
Was the site once of a city great and gay, 

(So they say) 
Of our country's very capital, its prince 

Ages since 10 

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far 

Peace or war. 

11 

Now, — the country does not even boast a tree, 

As you see, 
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills 15 

From the hills 
Intersect and give a name to (else they run 

Into one), 



LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 65 

Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires 

Up like fires 20 

O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall 
Bounding all, 

Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, 
Twelve abreast. 



in 

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass 25 

Never was! 
Such a carpet as, this summer time, o'erspreads 

And embeds 
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, 

Stock or stone — 30 

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe 

Long ago; 
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame 

Struck them tame; 
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold 35 

Bought and sold. 



IV 

Now, — the single little turret that remains 

On the plains, 
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd 

Overscored, 40 

While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks 

Through the chinks — 
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time 

Sprang sublime, 
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced 45 

As they raced, 
And the monarch and his minions and his dames 

Viewed the games. 
Browning — 5 



66 LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 

V 

And I know — while thus the quiet-colored eve 

Smiles to leave 5a 

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece 

In such peace, 
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray 

Melt away — 
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair 55: 

Waits me there 
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul 

For the goal, 
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb 

Till I come. 60 

VI 

But he looked upon the city, every side, 

Far and wide, 
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' 

Colonnades, 
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, — and then, 65 

All the men! 
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, 

Either hand 
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace 

Of my face, 70 

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech 

Each on each. 

VII 

In one year they sent a million fighters forth 

South and North, 
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high 75 

As the sky, 
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force — 

Gold, of course. 



HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 67 

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! 

Earth's returns 80 

For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin ! 

Shut them in, 
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! 

Love is best. 



HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA 

(See Note, page 157) 

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent l to the Northwest died away; 
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz 2 Bay; 
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar 3 lay; 
In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar 4 grand 
and gray. 
Here and here did England help me; how can I help England? " 
— say, 5 

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, 
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. 



HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 

(See Note, page 157) 

Oh, to be in England now that April's there, 

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 

Round the elm-tree bole 5 are in tiny leaf, 

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 5 

In England — now ! 

1 A cape on the southwestern point of Portugal. 

2 A bay on the southwestern coast of Spain. 

3 A cape on the southwestern coast of Spain. 

4 A fortified British promontory, on the southern coast of Spain, 
6 Trunk. 



68 SONGS FROM "PIP PA PASSES" 

And after April, when May follows 

And the white throat builds, and all the swallows! 

Hark, where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 10: 

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture! 

And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, 15 

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 

The buttercups, the little children's dower 

— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 



SONGS FROM "PIPPA PASSES" 

(See Note, page 158) 



The year's at the spring, 
And day's at the morn; 
Morning's at seven; 
The hill-side's dew-pearled; 
The lark's on the wing; 
The snail's on the thorn; 
God's in His heaven — 
All's right with the world! 

II 

1 

Give her but a least excuse to love me! 

When — where — 
How — can this arm establish her above me. 

If fortune fixed her as my lady there, 
There already, to eternally reprove me? 



SONGS FROM "PIPPA PASSES" 69 

("Hist!" — said Kate 1 the queen; 
But "Oh," cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 

" Tis only a page that carols unseen, 
Crumbling your hounds their messes!") 

11 

Is she wronged? — To the rescue of her honor, 10 

My heart! 
Is she poor? — What costs it to be styled a donor 

Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part. 
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her! 

("Nay, list!" — bade Kate the queen; 
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 15 

"'Tis only a page that carols unseen, 
Fitting your hawks their jesses!") 

Ill 

1 

You'll love me yet! — and I can tarry 

Your love's protracted growing; 
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry, 
• From seeds of April's sowing. 

11 

I plant a heartful now; some seed 5 

At least is sure to strike 
And yield — what you'll not pluck indeed, 

Not love, but, may be, like. 

in 

You'll look at least on love's remains, 

A grave's one violet; 10 

Your look? — that pays a thousand pains. 

What's death? You'll love me yet! 
1 Caterina Cornaro, Queen cf Cyprus from 1473 to 1488. 



7° PA RTING A T MORNING 

MEETING AT NIGHT 

(See Note, page 158) 



The gray sea and the long black land; 

And the yellow half-moon large and low; 

And the startled little waves that leap 

In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 

As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 55 

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 

11 

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; 

Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 

And blue spurt of a lighted match, IO 

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, 

Than the two hearts beating each to each! 



PARTING AT MORNING 

(See Note, page 158) 

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim; 
And straight was a path of gold for him, 
And the need of a world of men for me. 



LIFE IN A LOVE 71 

SUMMUM BONUM l 

(See Note, page 158) 

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee; 

All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem; 

In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea; 

Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and 

— how far above them — 

Truth, that's brighter than gem, 5 

Trust, that's purer than pearl, — 
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe — all were for me 
In the kiss of one girl. 

LIFE IN A LOVE 

(See Note, page 158) 

Escape me? 
Never — 
Beloved! 
While I am I, and you are you, 

So long as the world contains us both, 5 

Me the loving and you the loth, 
While the one eludes, must the other pursue. 
My life is a fault at last, I fear; 

It seems too much like a fate, indeed! 
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed. 10 

But what if I fail of my purpose here? 
It is but to keep the nerves at strain, 

To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, 
And baffled, get up and begin again, — 

So the chase takes up one's life, that's all. 15 

1 The highest good. 



72 JAMES LEE'S WIFE 

While, look but once from your farthest bound 

At me so deep in the dust and dark, 
No sooner the old hope goes to ground 

Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark, 
I shape me — 20 

Ever 
Removed! 



SONG FROM " JAMES LEE'S WIFE" 

AMONG THE ROCKS 
(See Note, page 159) 



Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, 
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones 

To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet 

For the ripple to run over in its mirth; 

Listening the while, where on the heap of stones 

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. 

H 

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true; 

Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. 
If you loved only what were worth your love, 
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you. 

Make the low nature better by your throes! 
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above! 



A FACE 73 

MISCONCEPTIONS 

(See Note, page 159) 



This is a spray the bird clung to, 

Making it blossom with pleasure, 
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, 

Fit for her nest and her treasure 

Oh, what a hope beyond measure 5 

Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to, — 
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to! 

11 

This is a heart the queen leant on, 

Thrilled in a minute erratic, 
Ere the true bosom she bent on, 10 

Meet for love's regal dalmatic. 1 

Oh, what a fancy ecstatic 
Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on, — 
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on! 



A FACE 

(See Note, page 159) 

If one could have that little head of hers 
Painted upon a background of pale gold, 

Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers! 

No shade encroaching on the matchless mold 

Of those two lips, which should be opening soft 

In the pure profile; not as when she laughs, 
1 A robe worn by medieval kings at their coronation. 



74 MY STAR 

For that spoils all; but rather as if aloft 

Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's 
Burden of honey-colored buds to kiss 
And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this. 10 

Then her lithe neck, three ringers might surround, 
How it should waver on the pale gold ground 
Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts! 
I know, Correggio l loves to mass, in rifts 
Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb 15 

Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb ; 
But these are only massed there, I should think, 
Waiting to see some wonder momently 
Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky 
(That's the pale ground you'd see this sweet face by) , 20 
All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye 
Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink. 



MY STAR 

(See Note, page 160) 

All that I know 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar 2 ) 
Now a dart of red, 5 

Now a dart of blue; 
Till my friends have said 
They would fain see, too, 
My star that dartles the red and the blue! 
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled; 10 

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. 

1 Italian painter (1494-1534). 

2 The Iceland spar, a mineral that refracts light. 



PROSPICE 75 

PROSPICE 1 

(See Note, page 160) 

Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 5 

The post of the foe, 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear 2 in a visible form? 

Yet the strong man must go; 
For the journey is done and the summit attained, 

And the barriers fall, 10 

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 

The reward of it all 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, 15 

And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 20 

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 

The black minute's at end, 
And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 25 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee 3 again, 

And with God be the rest! 
1 Look forward. 2 Death. 3 This refers to Browning's wife. 



76 THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 

(See Note, page 160) 
I 
I said — Then, dearest, since 'tis so, 
Since now at length my fate I know, 
Since nothing all my love avails, 
Since all my life seemed meant for fails, 

Since this was written and needs must be — 5 

My whole heart rises up to bless 
Your name in pride and thankfulness! 
Take back the hope you gave, — I claim 
Only a memory of the same, 
— And this beside, if you will not blame, 1 j 

Your leave for one more last ride with me. 

11 

My mistress bent that brow of hers; 
Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs 
When pity would be softening through, 
Fixed me a breathing-while or two 

With life or death in the balance; right! 
The blood replenished me again; 
My last thought was at least not vain; 
I and my mistress, side by side, 

Shall be together, breathe and ride, 20 

So, one day more am I deified. 

Who knows but the world may end to-night? 

in 
Hush! if you saw some western cloud 
All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed 
By many benedictions — sun's 25 

And moon's and evening star's at once — 



15 



THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 77 

And so, you, looking and loving best, 
Conscious grew, your passion drew 
Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too, 
Down on you, near and yet more near, 30 

Till flesh must fade for heaven was here ! — 
Thus leant she and lingered — joy and fear 

Thus lay she a moment on my breast. 



IV 

Then we began to ride. My soul 

Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll 35 

Freshening and fluttering in the wind. 

Past hopes already lay behind. 

What need to strive with a life awry? 
Had I said that, had I done this, 
So might I gain, so might I miss. 40 

Might she have loved me? just as well 
She might have hated, who can tell ! 
Where had I been now if the worst befell? 

And here we are riding, she and I. 



Fail I alone, in words and deeds? 45 

Why, all men strive and who succeeds? 
We rode; it seemed my spirit flew, 
Saw other regions, cities new, 

As the world rushed by on either side. 
I thought, — all labor, yet no less 50 

Bear up beneath their unsuccess. 
Look at the end of work, contrast 
The petty done, the undone vast, 
This present of theirs with the hopeful past! 

I hoped she would love me; here we ride. 55 



78 THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 

VI 

What hand and brain went ever paired? 
What heart alike conceived and dared? 
What act proved all its thought had been? 
What will but felt the fleshly screen? 

We ride and I see her bosom heave. 60 

There's many a crown for who can reach. 
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each ! 
The flag stuck on a heap of bones, 
A soldier's doing! what atones? 
They scratch his name on the Abbey stones. 1 65 

My riding is better, by their leave. 

VII 

What does it all mean, poet? Well, 

Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell 

What we felt only; you expressed 

You hold things beautiful the best, 70 

And pace them in rime so, side by side. 
'Tis something, nay 'tis much; but then, 
Have you yourself what's best for men? 
Are you — poor, sick, old ere your time — 
Nearer one whit your own sublime 75 

Than we who never have turned a rime? 

Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride. 

VIII 

And you, great sculptor — so, you gave 

A score of years to Art, her slave, 

And that's your Venus, whence we turn 80 

To yonder girl that fords the burn ! 

You acquiesce, and shall I repine? 
What, man of music, you grown gray 
With notes and nothing else to say, 

1 The monuments in Westminster Abbey, London, the chief burial place 
of the famous men of Great Britain. 



THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 79 

Is this your sole praise from a friend, 85 

" Greatly his opera's strains intend, 
But in music we know how fashions end!" 

I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine. 

rx 

Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate 
Proposed bliss here should sublimate 90 

My being — had I signed the bond — 
Still one must lead some life beyond, 

Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. 
This foot once planted on the goal, 
This glory garland round my soul, 95 

Could I descry such? Try and test! 
I sink back shuddering from the quest. 
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best? 

Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride. 



And yet — she has not spoke so long! 100 

What if heaven be that, fair and strong 
At life's best, with our eyes upturned 
Whither life's flower is first discerned, 

We, fixed so, ever should so abide? 
What if we still ride on, we two, 105 

With life forever old yet new, 
Changed not in kind but in degree, 
The instant made eternity, — 
And heaven just prove that I and she 

Ride, ride together, forever ride? no 



80 BY THE FIRESIDE 

BY THE FIRESIDE 

(See Note, page 161) 



How well I know what I mean to do 

When the long dark autumn evenings come; 

And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? 
With the music of all thy voices, dumb 

In life's November too! 



n 

I shall be found by the fire, suppose, 
O'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age; 

While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, 
And I turn the page, and I turn the page, 

Not verse now, only prose! 10 

in 

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, 

"There he is at it, deep in Greek; 
Now then, or never, out we slip 

To cut from the hazels by the creek 
A mainmast for our ship!" 15 

rv 

I shall be at it indeed, my friends! 

Greek puts already on either side 
Such a branch-work forth as soon extends 

To a vista opening far and wide, 
And I pass out where it ends. 20 



BY THE FIRESIDE 8 1 

V 

The outside frame, like your hazel trees — 

But the inside archway widens fast, 
And a rarer sort succeeds to these, 

And we slope to Italy at last 
And youth, by green degrees. 25 

VI 

I follow wherever I am led, 

Knowing so well the leader's hand. 
Oh woman country, wooed not wed, 

Loved all the more by earth's male lands, 
Laid to their hearts instead! 30 

VII 

Look at the ruined chapel again 

Halfway up in the Alpine gorge! 
Is that a tower, I point you plain, 

Or is it a mill, or an iron forge 
Breaks solitude in vain? 35 

VIII 

A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; 

The woods are round us, heaped and dim; 
From slab to slab how it slips and springs, 

The thread of water single and slim, 
Through the ravage some torrent brings! 40 

DC 

Does it feed the little lake below? 

That speck of white just on its marge 
Is Pella *; see, in the evening glow, 

How sharp the silver spear heads charge 
When Alp meets heaven in snow! 45 

1 A village in northern Italy on the Lake of Orta, distinguished from 
afar by its white houses. 
Browning — 6 



82 BY THE FIRESIDE 

X 

On our other side is the straight-up rock; 

And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it 
By bowlder stones, where lichens mock - 

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit 
Their teeth to the polished block. 

XI 

Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, 
And thorny balls, each three in one, 

The chestnuts throw on our path in showers! 
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun, 

These early November hours, 

XII 

That crimson the creeper's leaf across 
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, 

O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, 
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped 

Elf-needled mat of moss. 

XIII 

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged 
Last evening — nay, in to-day's first dew 

Yon sudden coral nipple bulged, 

Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew 

Of toadstools peep indulged. 

XIV 

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge 
That takes the turn to a range beyond, 

Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge, 
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond 

Danced over by the midge. 



BY THE FIRESIDE 83 

XV 

The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, 

Blackish-gray and mostly wet; 
Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dike. 

See here again, how the lichens fret 
And the roots of the ivy strike! 75 

XVI 

Poor little place, where its one priest comes 

On a festa-day, if he comes at all, 
To the dozen folk from their scattered homes, 

Gathered within that precinct small 
By the dozen ways one roams — 80 

XVII 

To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts, 
Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed, 

Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, 
Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread 

Their gear on the rock's bare juts. 85 

XVIII 

It has some pretension too, this front, 

With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise 
Set over the porch, Art's early wont; 

'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise, 
But has borne the weather's brunt — 90 

XIX 

Not from the fault of the builder, though, 

For a pent-house properly projects 
Where three carved beams make a certain show, 

Dating — good thought of our architect's — 
Five, six, nine, he lets you know. 95 



84 BY THE FIRESIDE 

XX 

And all day long a bird sings there, 

And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times; 

The place is silent and aware; 

It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, 

But that is its own affair. ioo > 

XXI 

My perfect wife, my Leonor, 

Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too, 
Whom else could I dare look backward for, 

With whom besides should I dare pursue 
The path gray heads abhor? ic 

XXII 

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; 

Youth, flowery all the way, there stops — 
Not they; age threatens and they contemn, 

Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, 
One inch from life's safe hem ! 1 1 

XXIII 

With me, youth led ... I will speak now, 

No longer watch you as you sit 
Reading by firelight, that great brow 

And the spirit-small hand propping it, 
Mutely, my heart knows how — 1 1 

XXIV 

When, if I think but deep enough, 

You are wont to answer, prompt as rime; 

And you, too, find without rebuff 

Response your soul seeks many a time, 

Piercing its fine flesh-stuff. 12 



BY THE FIRESIDE 8$ 

XXV 

My own, confirm me ! If I tread 

This path back, is it not in pride 
To think how little I dreamed it led 

To an age so blest that, by its side, 
Youth seems the waste instead? 125 

XXVI 

My own, see where the years conduct! * 

At first, 'twas something our two souls 

Should mix as mists do ; each is sucked 
In each now; on, the new stream rolls, 

Whatever rocks obstruct. 130 

XXVH 

Think, when our one soul understands 

The great Word which makes all things new, 

When earth breaks up and heaven expands, 
How will the change strike me and you 

In the house not made with hands? 135 

xxvni 

Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine, 

Your heart anticipate my heart, 
You must be just before, in fine, 

See and make me see, for your part, 
New depths of the divine ! 140 

XXIX 

But who could have expected this 

When we two drew together first 
Just for the obvious human bliss, 

To satisfy fife's daily thirst 
With a thing men seldom miss? 145 



86 BY THE FIRESIDE 

XXX 

Come back with me to the first of all, 

Let us lean and love it over again, 
Let us now forget and now recall, 

Break the rosary in a pearly rain, 
And gather what we let fall! 150 

XXXI 

What did I say? — that a small bird sings 
All day long, save when a brown pair 

Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings 
Strained to a bell ; 'gainst noonday glare 

You count the streaks and rings. 155 

XXXII 

But at afternoon or almost eve 

'Tis better; then the silence grows 
To that degree, you half believe 

It must get rid of what it knows, 
Its bosom does so heave. 160 

XXXIII 

Hither we walked then, side by side, 

Arm in arm and cheek to cheek, 
And still I questioned or replied, 

While my heart, convulsed to really speak, 
Lay choking in its pride. 165 

xxxiv 

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, 
And pity and praise the chapel sweet, 

And care about the fresco's loss, 

And wish for our souls a like retreat, 

And wonder at the moss. 170 






BY THE FIRESIDE 87 

XXXV 

Stoop and kneel on the settle under, 
Look through the window's grated square. 

Nothing to see! For fear of plunder, 
The cross is down and the altar bare, 

As if thieves don't fear thunder. 175 

xxxvi 

We stoop and look in through the grate, 

See the little porch and rustic door, 
Read duly the dead builder's date; 

Then cross the bridge that we crossed before, 
Take the path again — but wait! 180 

XXXVII 

Oh moment one and infinite ! 

The water slips o'er stock and stone; 
The West is tender, hardly bright; 

How gray at once is the evening grown — 
One star, its chrysolite! 185 

XXXVIII 

We two stood there with never a third, 

But each by each, as each knew well; 
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, 

The lights and the shades made up a spell 
Till the trouble grew and stirred. 190 

XXXIX 

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! 

And the little less, and what worlds away! 
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, 

Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, 
And life be a proof of this ! 195 



88 BY THE FIRESIDE 

XL 

Had she willed it, still had stood the screen 
So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her; 

I could fix her face with a guard between, 
And find her soul as when friends confer, 

Friends — lovers that might have been. 

XLI 

For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, 

Wanting to sleep now over its best. 
Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, 

But bring to the last leaf no such test! 
"Hold the last fast!" runs the rime. 201 

XLII 

For a chance to make your little much, 

To gain a lover and lose a friend, 
Venture the tree and a myriad such, 

When nothing you mar but the year can mend; 
But a last leaf — fear to touch! 21c 

XLIII 

Yet should it unfasten itself and fall 

Eddying down till it find your face 
At some slight wind — best chance of all ! 

Be your heart henceforth its dwelling place 
You trembled to forestall! 215 

XLIV 

Worth how well, those dark gray eyes, 
That hair so dark and dear, how worth 

That a man should strive and agonize, 
And taste a veriest hell on earth 

For the hope of such a prize! 220 



BY THE FIRESIDE 89 

XLV 

You might have turned and tried a man, 

Set him a space to weary and wear, 
And prove which suited more your plan, 

His best of hope or his worst despair, 
Yet end as he began. 225 

XLVI 

But you spared me this, like the heart you are, 

And filled my empty heart at a word. 
If two lives join, there is oft a scar, 

They are one and one, with a shadowy third; 
One near one is too far. 230 

XLVII 

A moment after, and hands unseen 

Were hanging the night around us fast; 
But we knew that a bar was broken between 

Life and life ; we were mixed at last 
In spite of the mortal screen. 235 

XLVIII 

The forests had done it; there they stood; 

We caught for a moment the powers at play. 
They had mingled us so, for once and good, 

Their work was done — we might go or stay, 
They relapsed to their ancient mood. 240 

XLIX 

How the world is made for each of us ! 

How all we perceive and know in it 
Tends to some moment's product thus, 

When a soul declares itself — to wit, 
By its fruit, the thing it does! 245 



90 BY THE FIRESIDE 

L 

Be hate that fruit, or love that fruit, 

It forwards the general deed of man, . 
And each of the Many helps to recruit 

The life of the race by a general plan; 
Each living his own, to boot. 250 

LI 

I am named and known by that moment's feat; 

There took my station and degree; 
So grew my own small life complete, 

As nature obtained her best of me — 
One born to love you, sweet! 255 

LII 

And to watch you sink by the fireside now 

Back again, as you mutely sit 
Musing by firelight, that great brow 

And the spirit-small hand propping it, 
Yonder, my heart knows how! 260 

LILT 

So, earth has gained by one man the more, 
And the gain of earth must be heaven's gain too; 

And the whole is well worth thinking o'er 
When autumn comes — which I mean to do 

One day, as I said before. 265 



INSTANS TYRANNUS 91 

INSTANS TYRANNUS x 

(See Note, page 162) 

I 

Of the million or two, more or less, 
I rule and possess, 
One man, for some cause undefined, 
Was least to my mind. 

11 

I struck him, he groveled of course — 5 

For, what was his force? 

I pinned him to earth with my weight 

And persistence of hate; 

And he lay, would not moan, would not curse, 

As his lot might be worse. 10 

in 

"Were the object less mean, would he stand 

At the swing of my hand! 

For obscurity helps him, and blots 

The hole where he squats." 

So, I set my five wits on the stretch 15 

To inveigle the wretch. 

All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw, 

Still he couched there perdue; 2 

I tempted his blood and his flesh, 

Hid in roses my mesh, 20 

Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth; 

Still he kept to his filth. 

1 "The Threatening Tyrant." 2 Hidden. 



02 INSTANS TYRANNUS 

IV 

Had he kith now or kin, were access 

To his heart, did I press; 

Just a son or a mother to seize! 25 

No such booty as these. 

Were it simply a friend to pursue 

'Mid my million or two, 

Who could pay me, in person or pelf, 

What he owes me himself! 30 

No; I could not but smile through my chafe; 

For the fellow lay safe 

As his mates do, the midge and the nit, 

— Through minuteness, to wit. 






Then a humor more great took its place 35 

At the thought of his face; 

The droop, the low cares of the mouth, 

The trouble uncouth 

Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain 

To put out of its pain. 

And, "no!" I admonished myself, 

"Is one mocked by an elf, 

Is one baffled by toad or by rat? 

The gravamen's l in that! 

How the lion, who crouches to suit 45 

His back to my foot, 

Would admire 2 that I stand in debate! 

But the small turns the great 

If it vexes you, — that is the thing ! 

Toad or rat vex the king? 50 

Though I waste half my realm to unearth 

Toad or rat, 'tis well worth!" 

Grievance. 2 Wonder. 



INSTANS TYRANNUS 93 

VI 

So, I soberly laid my last plan 

To extinguish the man. 

Round his creep-hole, with never a break, 55 

Ran my fires for his sake; 

Overhead, did my thunder combine 

With my underground mine, 

Till I looked from my labor content 

To enjoy the event. 60 

VII 

When sudden . . . how think ye, the end? 

Did I say "without friend"? 

Say rather, from marge to blue marge 

The whole sky grew his targe 1 

With the sun's self for visible boss, 2 65 

While an Arm ran across 

Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast 

Where the wretch was safe pressed! 

Do you see! Just 3 my vengeance complete, 

The man sprang to his feet, 70 

Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! 

— So, / was afraid ! 

1 Shield. 

2 The central projection of the shield. 

8 "Just (as) my vengeance (was) complete." 



94 THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 

(See Note, page 163) 

That second time they hunted me 

From hill to plain, from shore to sea, 

And Austria, hounding far and wide 

Her bloodhounds through the country-side, 

Breathed hot and instant on my trace, — 5 

I made six days a hiding place 

Of that dry green old aqueduct 

Where I and Charles, 1 when boys, have plucked 

The fireflies from the roof above, 

Bright creeping through the moss they love. 10 

— How long it seems since Charles was lost! 

Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed 

The country in my very sight; 

And when that peril ceased at night, 

The sky broke out in red dismay 15 

With signal fires; well, there I lay 

Close covered o'er in my recess, 

Up to the neck in ferns and cress, 

Thinking on Metternich 2 our friend, 

And Charles's miserable end, 20 

And much beside, two days; the third, 

Hunger o'ercame me when I heard 

The peasants from the village go 

To work among the maize; you know, 

With us in Lombardy, they bring 25 

Provisions packed on mules, a string 

With little bells that cheer their task, 

And casks, and boughs on every cask 

1 Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano at first supported the Revolution 
for Italian liberty but later abandoned it. 

2 Foreign minister of Austria, an indomitable foe of Italian liberty. 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 95 

To keep the sun's heat from the wine; 

These I let pass in jingling line, 30 

And, close on them, dear noisy crew, 

The peasants from the village, too; 

For at the very rear would troop 

Their wives and sisters in a group 

To help, I knew. When these had passed, 35 

I threw my glove to strike the last, 

Taking the chance. She did not start, 

Much less cry out, but stooped apart, 

One instant rapidly glanced round, 

And saw me beckon from the ground. 40 

A wild bush grows and hides my crypt; 

She picked my glove up while she stripped 

A branch off, then rejoined the rest 

With that; my glove lay in her breast. 

Then I drew breath; they disappeared. 45 

It was for Italy I feared. 



An hour, and she returned alone 
Exactly where my glove was thrown. 
Meanwhile came many thoughts; on me 
Rested the hopes of Italy. 50 

I had devised a certain tale 
Which, when 'twas told her, could not fail 
Persuade a peasant of its truth; 
I meant to call a freak of youth 
This hiding, and give hopes of pay, 55 

And no temptation to betray. 
But when I saw that woman's face, 
Its calm simplicity of grace, 
Our Italy's own attitude 

In which she walked thus far, and stood, 60 

Planting each naked foot so firm, 
To crush the snake and spare the worm — 



g6 THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 

At first sight of her eyes, I said, 

"lam that man upon whose head 

They fix the price, because I hate 65 

The Austrians over us. The State 

Will give you gold — oh, gold so much! — 

If you betray me to their clutch, 

And be your death, for aught I know, 

If once they find you saved their foe. 70 

Now, you must bring me food and drink, 

And also paper, pen and ink, 

And carry safe what I shall write 

To Padua, which you'll reach at night 

Before the duomo l shuts; go in, 75 

And wait till Tenebrae 2 begin; 

Walk to the third confessional, 

Between the pillar and the wall, 

And kneeling whisper, Whence comes peace? 

Say it a second time, then cease; 80 

And if the voice inside returns, 

From Christ and Freedom; what concerns 

The cause of Peace? — for answer, slip 

My letter where you placed your lip; 

Then come back happy; we have done 85 

Our mother service — I, the son, 

As you the daughter of our land!" 

Three mornings more, she took her stand 
In the same place, with the same eyes. 
I was no surer of sunrise 90 

Than of her coming. We conferred 
Of her own prospects, and I heard 
She had a lover — stout and tall, 
She said — then let her eyelids fall, 

1 Cathedral. 

2 A religious service held in Holy Week, at which it is customary to darken 
the church. 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 97 

"He could do much" — as if some doubt 95 

Entered her heart, — then, passing out, 

" She could not speak for others, who 

Had other thoughts; herself she knew." 

And so she brought me drink and food. 

After four days, the scouts pursued 100 

Another path; at last arrived 

The help my Paduan friends contrived 

To furnish me. She brought the news. 

For the first time I could not choose 

But kiss her hand, and lay my own 105 

Upon her head — "This faith was shown 

To Italy, our mother; she 

Uses my hand and blesses thee." 

She followed down to the seashore; 

I left and never saw her more. no 



How very long since I have thought 
Concerning — much less wished for — aught 
Beside the good of Italy, 
• For which I live and mean to die! 
I never was in love; and since n S 

Charles proved false, what shall now convince 
My inmost heart I have a friend? 
However, if I pleased to spend 
Real wishes on myself — say, three — 
I know at least what one should be. 1 20 

I would grasp Metternich until 
I felt his red wet throat distill 
In blood through these two hands. And next, 
— Nor much for that am I perplexed — 
Charles, perjured traitor, for his part, 125 

Should die slow of a broken heart 
Under his new employers. Last 
— Ah, there, what should I wish? For fast 
Browning — 7 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 

Do I grow old and out of strength. 

If I resolved to seek at length 130 

My father's house again, how scared 

They all would look, and unprepared! 

My brothers live in Austria's pay 

— Disowned me long ago, men say; 

And all my early mates who used 135 

To praise me so — perhaps induced 

More than one early step of mine — 

Are turning wise; while some opine 

"Freedom grows license," some suspect 

" Haste breeds delay," and recollect 140 

They always said, such premature 

Beginnings never could endure! 

So, with a sullen "All's for best," 

The land seems settling to its rest. 

I think, then, I should wish to stand 145 

This evening in that dear, lost land, 

Over the sea the thousand miles, 

And know if yet that woman smiles 

With the calm smile; some little farm 

She lives in there, no doubt. What harm 150 

If I sat on the door-side bench, 

And, while her spindle made a trench 

Fantastically in the dust, 

Inquired of all her fortunes — just 

Her children's ages and their names, 155 

And what may be the husband's aims 

For each of them. I'd talk this out, 

And sit there, for an hour about, 

Then kiss her hand once more, and lay 

Mine on her head, and go my way. 160 

So much for idle wishing — how 
It steals the time! To business now. 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 99 

A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 

Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe 
(See Note, page 163) 

Let us begin and carry up this corpse, 

Singing together. 
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes, 1 

Each in its tether 2 
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 5 

Cared for till cock-crow; 
Look out if yonder be not day again 

Rimming the rock-row! 3 
That's the appropriate country; there man's thought, 

Rarer, in tenser, 10 

Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, 

Chafes in the censer. 
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; 

Seek we sepulture 
On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 15 

Crowded with culture! 
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; 

Clouds overcome 4 it; 
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's 

Circling its summit. 20 

Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights; 

Wait ye the warning? 
Our low life was the level's and the night's; 

He's for the morning. 
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 25 

'Ware the beholders! 

1 The farms and villages occupied by common and uneducated people. 

2 Narrow limits. 3 Ridge of the mountain. 4 Pass over. 



ioo A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 

This is our master, famous, calm and dead, 
Borne on our shoulders. 

Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft 

Safe from the weather! 30 

He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, 

Singing together, 
He was a man born with thy face and throat, 

Lyric Apollo ! 
Long he lived nameless; how should spring take note 35 

Winter would follow? 
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! 

Cramped and diminished, 
Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! 

" My dance is finished? " 40 

No, that's the world's way; (keep the mountain-side, 

Make for the city!) 
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride 

Over men's pity; 
Left play for work, and grappled with the world 45 

Bent on escaping. 1 
"What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? 

Show me their shaping, 2 
Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, — 

Give! " — So, he gowned 3 him, 50 

Straight got by heart that book to its last page; 

Learned, we found him. 
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, 

Accents uncertain. 
"Time to taste life," another would have said, 55 

"Up with the curtain!" 
This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? 

Patience a moment! 

1 The world of the past. 

2 Mind. 

3 Put on the student's gown, that is, become a student. 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL ioi 

Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, 

Still there's the comment. 60 

Let me know all ! Prate not of most or least, 

Painful or easy! 
Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, 

Ay, nor feel queasy. 1 " 
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, 65 

When he had learned it, 
When he had gathered all books had to give! 

Sooner, he spurned it. 
Image the whole, then execute the parts — 

Fancy the fabric. 70 

Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, 

Ere mortar dab brick ! 

(Here's the town-gate reached; there's the market place 

Gaping before us.) 
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace 75 

(Hearten our chorus!) 
That before living he'd learn how to live — 

No end to learning. 
Earn the means first — God surely will contrive 

Use for our earning. 80 

Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes! 

Live now or never! " 
He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! 

Man has Forever." 
Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head; 85 

Calculus 2 racked him; 
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead; 

Tussis 3 attacked him. 
"Now, master, take a little rest!" — not he! 

(Caution redoubled! 90 

Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) 

Not a whit troubled, 

1 Nauseated. 2 The disease known as the stone. 3 A cough. 



102 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 

Back to his studies, fresher than at first, 

Fierce as a dragon 
He (soul-hydroptic * with a sacred thirst) 95 

Sucked at the flagon. 
Oh, if we draw a circle premature, 

Heedless of far gain, 
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure 

Bad is our bargain ! 100 

Was it not great? did not he throw on God 

(He loves the burthen) — 
God's task to make the heavenly period 

Perfect the earthen? 
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear 105 

Just what it all meant? 
He would not discount life, as fools do here, 

Paid by installment. 
He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success 

Found, or earth's failure. 1 10 

"Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered "Yes! 

Hence with life's pale lure!" 
That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it; 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 115 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one, 

His hundred's soon hit; 
This high man, aiming at a million, 

Misses an unit. 120 

That, has the world here — should he need the next, 

Let the world mind him! 
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 

Seeking shall find him. 
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, 125 

Ground he at grammar; 

1 Thirsty. 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 103 

Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife; 

While he could stammer 
He settled Hoti' s 1 business — let it be ! — 

Properly based Oun — * 130 

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, 1 

Dead from the waist down. 
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place. 

Hail to your purlieus, 
All ye highfliers of the feathered race, 135 

Swallows and curlews! 
Here's the top-peak; the multitude below 

Live, for they can, there; 
This man decided not to Live but Know — 

Bury this man there? 140 

Here — here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, 

Lightnings are loosened, 
Stars come and go ! Let joy break with the storm, 

Peace let the dew send! 
Lofty designs must close in like effects; 145 

Loftily lying, 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying. 

1 Learned treatises have been written on the Greek particles, 8tI } 
that, etc., o$v, then, etc., and 5e, but, etc., the use of which is carefully dis- 
criminated. 



104 ANDREA DEL SARTO 

ANDREA DEL SARTO 

Called "The Faultless Painter" 
(See Note, page 164) 

But do not let us quarrel any more, 

No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for once; 

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? 

I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, 5 

Treat his own subject after his own way, 

Fix his own time, accept too his own price, 

And shut the money into this small hand 

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? 

Oh, I'll content him, — but to-morrow, Love! 10 

I often am much wearier than you think, 

This evening more than usual; and it seems 

As if — forgive now — should you let me sit 

Here by the window, with your hand in mine, 

And look a half hour forth on Fiesole, 1 15 

Both of one mind, as married people use, 2 

Quietly, quietly the evening through, 

I might get up to-morrow to my work 

Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. 

To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 20 

Your soft hand is a woman of itself, 

And mine, the man's bared breast she curls inside. 

Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve 

For each of the five pictures we require; 

It saves a model. So! keep looking so — 25 

My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! 

— How could you ever prick those perfect ears, 

1 A town near Florence, on the hillside. 

2 As married people are in the habit of being. 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 105 

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet — 

My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, 

Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30 

And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, 

While she looks — no one's; very dear, no less. 

You smile? why, there's my picture ready made, 

There's what we painters call our harmony ! 

A common grayness silvers everything, — 35 

All in a twilight, you and I alike 

— You, at the point of your first pride in me 
(That's gone, you know) — but I, at every point; 
My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down 

To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40 

There's the bell clinking from the chapel top; 

That length of convent wall across the way 

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; 

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, 

And autumn grows, autumn in everything. 45 

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape, 

As if I saw alike my work and self 

And all that I was born to be and do. 

A twilight piece. Love, we are in God's hand. 

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 50 

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 

I feel he laid the fetter; let it lie! 

This chamber for example — turn your head — 

All that's behind us! You don't understand 

Nor care to understand about my art, 55 

But you can hear at least when people speak; 

And that cartoon, the second from the door 

— It is the thing, Love ! so such things should be — 
Behold Madonna! — I am bold to say. 

I can do with my pencil what I know, 60 

What I see, what at bottom of my heart 
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep — 
Do easily, too — when I say, perfectly, 



106 ANDREA DEL SARTO 

I do not boast, perhaps; yourself are judge, 

Who listened to the Legate's talk last week; 65 

And just as much they used to say in France 

At any rate, 'tis easy, all of it! 

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past; 

I do what many dream of, all their lives, 

— Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 70 

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such 

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, 

Who strive — you don't know how the others strive 

To paint a little thing like that you smeared 

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, — 75 

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, 

(I know his name, no matter) — so much less ! 

Well, less is more, Lucrezia; I am judged. 

There burns a truer light of God in them, 

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80 

Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt 

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. 

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, 

Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, 

Enter and take their place there sure enough, 85 

Though they come back and cannot tell the world. 

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 

The sudden blood of these men! at a word — 

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. 

I, painting from myself and to myself, 90 

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame 

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 

Morello's 1 outline there is wrongly traced, 

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, 

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 95 

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 

1 The highest of the Apennines, north of Florence. 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 107 

Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray, 

Placid and perfect with my art; the worse! 

I know both what I want and what might gain, 100 

And yet how profitless to know, to sigh 

"Had I been two, another and myself, 

Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. 

Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth 

The Urbinate l who died five years ago. 105 

('Tis copied, George Vasari 2 sent it me.) 

Well, I can fancy how he did it all, 

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, 

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 

Above and through his art — for it gives way; no 

That arm is wrongly put — and there again — 

A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, 

Its body, so to speak; its soul is right, 

He means right — that, a child may understand. 

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it; 115 

But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 

Out of me, out of me ! And wherefore out? 

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you. 

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think — 120 

More than I merit, yes, by many times. 

But had you — oh, with the same perfect brow, 

And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, 

And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 

The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare — 125 

Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! 

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 

"God and the glory! never care for gain. 

The present by the future, what is that? 

1 The famous Italian painter, Raphael, or Rafael (1483-15 20) was born in 
Urbino. 

2 George Vasari (1511-1574), an Italian painter, the author of the famous 
Lives of Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. 



108 ANDREA DEL SARTO 

Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! l 13 

Rafael is waiting; up to God, all three!" 

I might have done it for you. So it seems; 

Perhaps not. All is as God overrules. 

Beside, incentives come from the soul's self; 

The rest avail not. Why do I need you? 135; 

What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? 

In this world, who can do a thing, will not; 

And who would do it, cannot, I perceive. 

Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power — 

And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 14 

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 

Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, 

That I am something underrated here, 

Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. 

I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, 145 

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. 2 

The best is when they pass and look aside; 

But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. 

Well may they speak ! That Francis, that first time, 

And that long festal year at Fontainebleau ! 3 150 

I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, 

Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear, 

In that humane great monarch's golden look, — 

One finger in his beard or twisted curl 

Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile, 155 

One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, 

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, 

I painting proudly with his breath on me, 

All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, 

Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 160 

Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts, — 

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, 

1 Michelangelo, or Michelagnolo (1475-1564), famous Italian artist. 

2 See note, page 164 

3 A town southeast of Paris, formerly a royal residence. 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 109 

This, in the background, waiting on my work, 

To crown the issue with a last reward ! 

A good time, was it not, my kingly days? 165 

And had you not grown restless . . . but I know — 

'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my instinct said; 

Too live the life grew, golden and not gray; 

And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt 

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. 170 

How could it end in any other way? 

You called me, and I came home to your heart. 

The triumph was — to reach and stay there; since 

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? 

Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, 175 

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! 

" Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; 

The Roman's is the better when you pray, 

But still the other's Virgin was his wife — " 

Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge 180 

Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows 

My better fortune, I resolve to think. 

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, 

Said one day Agnolo, his very self, 

To Rafael ... I have known it all these years ... 185 

(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts 

Upon a palace wall for Rome to see, 

Too lifted up in heart because of it) 

" Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub 

Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190 

Who, were he set to plan and execute 

As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, 

Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" 

To Rafael's! — And indeed the arm is wrong. 

I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see, 195 

Give the chalk here — quick, thus the line should go! 

Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out! 

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 



110 ANDREA DEL SARTO 

(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? 

Do you forget already words like those?) 200 

If really there was such a chance so lost, — 

Is, whether you're — not grateful — but more pleased. 

Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! 

This hour has been an hour! Another smile? 

If you would sit thus by me every night 205 

I should work better, do you comprehend? 

I mean that I should earn more, give you more. 

See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star; 

Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall, 

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 210 

Come from the window, love, — come in, at last, 

Inside the melancholy little house 

We built to be so gay with. God is just. 

King Francis may forgive me. Oft at nights 

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, 215 

The walls become illumined, brick from brick, 

Distinct instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, 

That gold of bis I did cement them with! 

Let us but love each other. Must you go? 

That Cousin here again? he waits outside? 220 

Must see you — you, and not with me? Those loans? 

More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? 

Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? 

While hand and eye and something of a heart 

Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth? 225 

I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit 

The gray remainder of the evening out, 

Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly 

How I could paint, were I but back in France, 

One picture, just one more — the Virgin's face, 230 

Not yours this time! I want you at my side 

To hear them — that is, Michel Agnolo — 

Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. 

Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. 



ANDREA DEL SARTO III 

I take the subjects for his corridor. 235 

Finish the portrait out of hand — there, there, 

And throw him in another thing or two 

If he demurs; the whole should prove enough 

To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, 

What's better and what's all I care about, 240 

Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! 

Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, 

The Cousin ! what does he to please you more? 

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
I regret little, I would change still less. 245 

Since there my past life lies, why alter it? 
The very wrong to Francis ! — it is true 
I took his coin, was tempted and complied, 
And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 
My father and my mother died of want. 250 

Well, had I riches of my own? you see 
How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. 
They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died; 
And I have labored somewhat in my time 
And hot been paid profusely. Some good son 255 

Paint my two hundred pictures — let him try! 
No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes, 
You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night. 
This must suffice me here. What would one have? 
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance — 260 
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 
Meted on each side by the angel's reed, 
For Leonard, 1 Rafael, Agnolo, and me 
To cover — the three first without a wife, 

While I have mine! So — still they overcome 265 

Because there's still Lucrezia, — as I choose. 

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my love. 
1 Leonardo da Vinci (145 2-1 5 19), famous Italian artist and scientist. 



112 ABT VOGLER 

ABT VOGLER 

After he has been Extemporizing upon the Musical Instrument of his Invention 
(See Note, page 165) 



Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, 

Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, 
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon 
willed * 
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, 
Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of aim, 5 

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep re- 
moved, — 
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable 
Name, 

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he 
loved! 

11 

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, 

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to 

raise! 10 

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now 

combine, 

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! 
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, 

Burrow awhile and build, broad on the' roots of things, 
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace 
well, 15 

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. 

1 A reference to the legend that Solomon possessed power over spirits 
of the earth and the air by virtue of a seal on which the name of God was 
engraved. 



ABT VOGLER 113 

in 

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion 
he was, 

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, 
Raising my rampired * walls of gold as transparent as glass, 

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest; 20 

For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, 

When a great illumination surprises a festal night — 
Outlining round and round Rome's dome 2 from space to spire) 

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was 
in sight. 

IV 

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's 
birth, 25 

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; 
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the 
earth, 
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the 
sky. 
Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, 
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering 
star; 30 

Meteor-moons, balls of blaze; and they did not pale nor pine, 
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor 
far. 

v 

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and 

glow, 

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, 3 

Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should 

blow, 35 

1 Fortified as with a rampart. 

2 The dome of St. Peter's cathedral in Rome was formerly illuminated 
for certain festivals. 

3 The original model from which copies are made. 

Browning — 8 



114 ABT VOGLER 

Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; 

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body 

and gone, 

But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth 

their new. 

What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon; 

And what is, — shall I say, matched both? for I was made 

perfect too. 40 



VI 

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul, 
All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly 
forth, 
All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, 
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder- 
worth. 
Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect proceeds 
from cause, 45 

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told ; 
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, 

Painter and poet are proud, in the artist list enrolled. — 



VII 

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, 

Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are! 50 
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, 

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a 
star. 
Consider it well; each tone of our scale in itself is naught; 

It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is said. 
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought, 55 

And, there! Ye have heard and seen; consider and bow the 
head! 



ABT VOGLER 115 

VIII 

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; 

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; 
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, 

That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. 60 
Never to be again! But many more of the kind 

As good, nay, better, perchance — is this your comfort to 
me? 
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind 

To the same, same self, same love, same God; ay, what was 
shall be. 

IX 

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? 65 

Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! 
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? 

Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power ex- 
pands? 
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as 
before; 

The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; 70 

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; 

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round. 



All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; 

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, 

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 76 

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 

Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by. 80 



Il6 ABT VOGLER 



XI 



And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 

For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? 
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue 
thence? 

Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be 
prized? 
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 85 

Each sufferer says his says, his scheme of the weal and woe; 
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; 

The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know. 



xn 

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign. 

I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. 90 

Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, 

Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor, — yes, 
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, 

Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep; 

Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is 

found, 95 

The C Major * of this life; so, now I will try to sleep. 

1 The keynote of the simplest musical scale; hence symbolic of everyday 
life. 



SAUL 117 

SAUL 

(See Note, page 166) 



Said Abner, 1 "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak, 
Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, and did kiss 

his cheek. 
And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent, 
Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent 
Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, 5 
Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet. 
For out of the black mid- tent's silence, a space of three days, 
Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise, 
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit 2 have ended their strife, 
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon 

life. 10 

11 

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew 
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue ■ 
Just broken to twine round thy harp strings, as if no wild heat 
Were now raging to torture the desert!" 



m 

Then I, as was meet, 
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet, 15 
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped; 
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped; 

1 Saul's chief captain. 

2 In ancient times melancholy was supposed to be caused by an evil spirit 
that had taken possession of its victim. 



n8 SAUL 

Hands and knees on the slippery grass patch, all withered and 

gone, 
That extends to the second inclosure, I groped my way on 
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I 

prayed, 20 

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid 
But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant ! " And no voice replied. 
At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but soon I descried 
A something more black than the blackness — the vast, the 

upright 
Main prop which sustains the pavilion; and slow into sight 25 
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. 
Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent roof, showed Saul. 

IV 

He stood as erect as that tent prop, both arms stretched out 

wide 
On the great cross support in the center, that goes to each 

side; 
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs 
And waiting his change, the king serpent all heavily hangs, 31 
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come 
With the springtime, — so agonized Saul, drear and stark, 

blind and dumb. 



Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we twine round its 

chords 
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — those sun- 
beams like swords! 35 
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one, 
So docile they come to the pen door till folding be done. 
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed 
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; 
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 40 
Into eve and the blue far above us, — so blue and so far! 



SAUL 119 

VI 

— Then, the tune for which quails on the cornland will each 

leave his mate 
To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate 
Till for boldness they fight one another; and then, what has 

weight 
To set the quick jerboa 1 a-musing outside his sand house — 45 
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse! 
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear, 
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here. 

VII 

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine song, 

when hand 
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great 

hearts expand 50 

And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — And then, the 

last song 
When the dead man is praised on his journey — "Bear, bear 

him along 
With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds 

not here 
To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. 
Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!" — And then, the 

glad chant 55 

Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens; next, she whom 

we vaunt 
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And then, the great 

march 
Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch 
Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends? — Then, 

the chorus intoned 
As the Levites 2 go up to the altar in glory enthroned. 60 

But I stopped here; for here in the darkness Saul groaned. 

1 A jumping rodent. 2 The priests, who were of the tribe of Levi. 



120 SAUL 

VIII 

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart; 
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered; and sparkles 

'gan dart 
From the jewels that woke in his turban at once with a start 
All its lordly male-sapphires, 1 and rubies courageous at heart. 65 
So the head; but the body still moved not, still hung there erect. 
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked, 
As I sang, — 

IX 

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 
Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rock, 70 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool silver 

shock 
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, 
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, 
And the locust-flesh 2 steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of 

wine, 75 

And the sleep in the dried river channel where bulrushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. 
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! 
Hast thou'loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou 

didst guard 80 

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? 
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men 

sung 
The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her faint tongue 
Joining in while it could to the witness, ' Let one more attest, 
I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for 

best?' 85 

1 Sapphires of superior quality. 

2 In eastern countries locusts are sometimes used for food. 






SAUL 121 

Then they sung through their tears in strong triumph, not much, 

but the rest. 
And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence 

grew 
Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained 

true; 
And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of wonder and 

hope, 
Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's 

scope, — 90 

Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine; 
And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head com- 
bine! 
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like 

the throe 
That, a- work in the rock, helps its labor and lets the gold go) 
High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning 

them, — all 95 

Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — King Saul!" 



And lo, with that leap of my spirit, — heart, hand, harp, and 

voice, 
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice 
Saul's fame in the light it was made for — as when, dare I say, 
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its 

array, 100 

And upsoareth the cherubim chariot — "Saul!" cried I, and 

stopped, 
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung 

propped 
By the tent's cross support in the center, was struck by his 

name. 
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the 

aim, 



122 SAUL 

And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he 

alone, 105 

While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust 

of stone 
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — leaves grasp of 

the sheet? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, 
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain 

of old, 
With his rents, the successive bequea things of ages untold — no 
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and 

scar 
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — all hail, there 

they are! 
— Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest 
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his 

crest 
For their food in the ardors of summer. One long shudder 

thrilled 115 

All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled 
At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware. 
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope and 

despair. 
Death was past, life not come; so he waited. Awhile his right 

hand 
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant, forthwith to 

remand 120 

To their place what new objects should enter; 'twas Saul as 

before. 
I looked up, and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more 
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore, 
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's slow decline 
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine 
Base with base to knit strength more intensely; so, arm folded 

arm 126 

O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 



SAUL 123 

XI 

What spell or what charm, 
(For awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I 

urge 
To sustain him where song had restored him? Song filled to 

the verge 
His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields 130 
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty; beyond, on what 

fields, 
Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye, 
And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they 

put by? 
He saith, "It is good;" still he drinks not; he lets me praise 

life, 
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 

xn 

Then fancies grew rife 135 
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the 

sheep 
Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep; 
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie 
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the 

sky; 
And I laughed — "Since my days are ordained to be passed 

with my flocks, 14° 

Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, 
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show 
Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know ! 
Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that 

gains 
And the prudence that keeps what men strive for!" And now 

these old trains 145 

Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the 

string 
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus — 



124 SAUL 

XIII 

"Yea, my King," 
I began — " thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring 
From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute; 
In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears 

fruit. 150 

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — how its stem trem- 
bled first 
Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst 
The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in 

turn 
Broke a-bloom and the palm tree seemed perfect, yet more was 

to learn, 
E'en the good that comes in with the palm fruit. Our dates shall 

we slight, 155 

When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the 

plight 
Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! 

stem and branch 
Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm wine 

shall stanch 
Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine. 
Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine! 160 
By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy 
More indeed, than at first when, inconscious, the life of a boy. 1 
Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou 

hast done 
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun 
Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though 

tempests efface, 165 

Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere 

trace 
The results of his past summer prime, — so, each ray of thy 

will, 
Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill 
1 "Thou didst enjoy" is understood before "the life of a boy." 



SAUL 125 

Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too give 

forth 
A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the 

North 170 

With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past! 
But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last. 
As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height, 
So with man — so his power and his beauty forever take flight. 
No! Again a long draught of my soul wine! Look forth o'er 

the years! 175 

Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the 

seer's! 
Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb — bid 

arise 
A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the 

skies, 
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers, whose fame 

would ye know? 
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go 180 
In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was Saul, so he 

did; 
With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid, — 
For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault 

to amend, 
In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall 

spend 
(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record 185 
With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — the statesman's 

great word 
Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave 
With smooth paper-reeds * grazing each other when prophet- 
winds rave; 
So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part 
In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou 

art!" 190 

1 The papyrus from which paper was made in ancient times. 



126 SAUL 

XIV 

And behold while I sang . . . but Thou who didst grant me, 

that day, 
And, before it, not seldom hast granted thy help to essay, 
Carry on and complete an adventure, — my shield and my sword 
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my 

word, — 
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavor 195 
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as 

ever 
On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, mighty to save, 
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance — God's throne 

from man's grave! 
Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice to my heart 
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took 

part, 200 

As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep, 
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep! 
For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron * upheaves 
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron 2 

retrieves 
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 



xv 

I say then, — my song 205 
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever more strong, 
Made a proffer of good to console him — he slowly resumed 
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed 
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes 
Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his countenance 
bathes, 210 

He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore, 
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before. 

1 A city near Jerusalem. 2 A brook near Jerusalem. 






SAUL 127 

He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had bent 

The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though 

much spent 
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did 

choose, 215 

To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. 
So sank he along by the tent prop, till, stayed by the pile 
Of his armor and war cloak and garments, he leaned there 

awhile, 
And sat out my singing, — one arm round the tent prop, to 

raise 
His bent head, and the other hung slack — till I touched on the 

praise 220 

I foresaw from all men in all time to the man patient there; 
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware 
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees 
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots 

which please 
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know 225 
If the best I could do had brought solace. He spoke not, but 

slow 
Lifted Up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care 
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow through my 

hair 
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, 

with kind power — 
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower. 230 
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized 

mine — ■ 
And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the 

sign? 
I yearned — " Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss, 
I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this; 
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence, 235 
As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's heart to 

dispense!" 



128 SAUL 

XVI 

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — no song more! 
outbroke — 

xvn 

"I have gone the whole round of creation; I saw and I spoke; 
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain 
And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — returned him 

again 240 

His creation's approval or censure. I spoke as I saw. 
I report, as a man may of God's work — all's love, yet all's law. 
Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked 
To perceive him has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked. 
Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare. 
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite 

Care! 246 

Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? 
I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no less, 
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. 250 
And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) 
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, 
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet. 
Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known, 255 
I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. 
There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink, 
I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think), 
Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst 
E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold, I could love if I durst! 260 
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake 
God's own speed in the one way of love; I abstain for love's sake, 
— What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors 

great and small, 
Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth 

appall? 



SAUL 129 

In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? 
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, 266 

That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts 

shift? 
Here, the creature surpass the creator, — the end, what began? 
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, 
And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone 

can? 270 

Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less 

power, 
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvelous dower 
Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, 
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? 
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest), 275 
These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, 

the best? 
Aye, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height 
This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, death's minute 

of night? 
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake, 
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him awake 280 
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set 
Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new harmony yet 
To be run and continued, and ended — who knows? — or 

endure ! 
The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make 

sure; 
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, 285 
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this. 

XVIII 

" I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive. 

In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. 

All's one gift; thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my 

prayer 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. 290 
Browning. — 9 



130 SAUL 

From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread 

Sabaoth. 1 
/ will? — the mere atoms despise me ! Why am I not loath 
To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare 
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my de- 
spair? 
This; — 'tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man 

would do! 295 

See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall 

through. 
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, 
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — knowing which, 
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! 
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou — so wilt 

thou! 300 

So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown — 
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down 
One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath, 
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death! 
As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 305 

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved! 
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the 

most weak. 
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek 
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, 310 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ 

stand!" 

XIX 

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night: 
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, 
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware. 315 
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, 

1 Armies. 



SAUL 131 

As a runner beset by the populace famished for news — 

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with 

her crews; 
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot 
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; but I fainted not, 
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed 
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, 322 
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. 
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth — 
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; 325 
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills; 
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind- thrills; 
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling 

still, 
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and 

chill 
That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with 

awe; 330 

E'en the serpent that slid away silent — he felt the new law. 
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the 

flowers; 
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine- 
bowers; 
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, 
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — " E'en so, it is 

so!" 335 



132 RABBI BEN EZRA 

RABBI BEN EZRA 

(See Note, page 168) 

I 

Grow old along with me! 1 

The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made; 

Our times are in his hand 

Who saith " A whole I planned, 5 

Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid!" 

II 
Not that, 2 amassing flowers, 
Youth sighed " Which rose make ours, 
Which lily leave and then as best recall?" 
Not that, admiring stars, 10 

It yearned " Nor Jove, nor Mars; 
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!" 

in 
Not for such hopes and fears 
Annulling youth's brief years, 

Do I remonstrate; folly wide the mark! 15 

Rather I prize the doubt 
Low kinds exist without, 
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. 

IV 

Poor vaunt of life indeed, 

Were man but formed to feed 20 

1 The rabbi is inviting a young friend to talk with him of old age. 

2 Connect the whole of this stanza with "Do I remonstrate," line 15. 
"I do not remonstrate that" etc. 



RABBI BEN EZRA 133 

On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men; 

Irks * care the crop-full bird? Frets 1 doubt the maw-crammed 
beast? 

v 2 
Rejoice we are allied 25 

To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive! 
A spark disturbs our clod; 
Nearer we hold of God 
Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. 30 

VI 

Then, welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 

Be our joys three parts pain! 

Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 35 

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! 

VII 

For thence — a paradox 

Which comforts while it mocks — 

Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail; 

What I aspired to be, 40 

And was not, comforts me; 

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. 

VIII 

What is he but a brute 
WTiose flesh has soul to suit, 3 

1 Does care irk (trouble) . . . does doubt fret, etc.? 

2 The divine element in us disturbs our lower natures (clod). We are 
nearer to God, who provides, than to the lower animals who receive his 
gifts. 

3 Whose soul does not soar above the animal needs of his body. 



134 RABBI BEN EZRA 

Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? 45 

To man, propose this test — 

Thy body at its best, 

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? 

IX 

Yet gifts should prove their use; 

I own the Past profuse 1 50 

Of power each side, perfection every turn; 

Eyes, ears took in their dole, 

Brain treasured up the whole; 

Should not the heart beat once " How good to live and learn"? 



Not once beat " Praise be thine! 55 

I see the whole design, 

I, who saw power, see now love perfect too. 

Perfect I call thy plan; 

Thanks that I was a man ! 

Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what thou shalt do!" 60 

XI 

For pleasant is this flesh; 

Our soul, in its rose-mesh 

Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest. 

Would we some prize might hold 

To match those manifold 65 

Possessions of the brute, — gain most, as we did best! 

xn 

Let us not always say 

" Spite of this flesh to-day 

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" 

1 1 own that my past was profuse of power, etc. 



RABBI BEN EZRA 135 

As the bird wings and sings, 70 

Let us cry " All good things 

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!" 

XIII 

Therefore I summon age 

To grant youth's heritage, 

Life's struggle having so far reached its term. 75 

Thence shall I pass, approved 

A man, for aye removed 

From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. 

xrv 
And I shall thereupon 

Take rest, ere I be gone 80 

Once more on my adventure brave and new; 
Fearless and unperplexed, 
When I wage battle next, 
What weapons to select, what armor to indue. 

xv . 

Youth ended, I shall try 85 

My gain or loss thereby; 

Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold; 

And I shall weigh the same, 

Give life its praise or blame. 

Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. 90 

XVI 

For note, when evening shuts, 

A certain moment cuts 

The deed off, calls the glory from the gray; 

A whisper from the west 

Shoots — " Add this to the rest, 95 

Take it and try its worth; here dies another day." 



136 RABBI BEN EZRA 

XVII 
So, still within this life, 
Though lifted o'er its strife, 
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, 
" This rage was right i' the main, ioo 

That acquiescence vain; 
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past." 



XVIH 

For more is not reserved 

To man, with soul just nerved 

To act to-morrow what he learns to-day; 105 

Here, work enough to watch 

The Master work, and catch 

Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. 

XIX 

As it was better, youth 

Should strive, through acts uncouth, no 

Toward making, than repose on aught found made; 

So, better, age, exempt 

From strife, should know, than tempt 

Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid! 



Enough now, if the Right 115 

And Good and Infinite 

Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, 

With knowledge absolute, 

Subject to no dispute 

From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. 120 

1 Man has learned enough when he has gained absolute, undisputed 
knowledge of God and right and goodness. 



RABBI BEN EZRA 137 

XXI 

Be there, for once and all, 

Severed great minds from small, 

Announced to each his station in the Past! 

Was I the world arraigned, 1 

Were they my soul disdained, 125 

Right? * Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! 

XXII 

Now, who shall arbitrate? 

Ten men love what I hate, 

Shun what I follow, slight what I receive, 

Ten, who in ears and eyes 130 

Match me. We all surmise, 

They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe? 



Not on the vulgar mass 

Called "work" must sentence pass, 

Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 135 

O'er which, from level stand, 

The low world laid its hand, 

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice. 



xxiv * 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 

And finger failed to plumb, 140 

So passed in making up the main account; 

All instincts immature, 

All purposes unsure, 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount; 

1 Let age decide who was right — I (whom) the world condemned or they 
(whom) my soul disdained. 

2 Not achievements alone are the measure of man's success in life but 
his instincts and purposes are also placed to his credit. 



138 RABBI BEN EZRA 

XXV 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 145 

Into a narrow act, 

Fancies that broke through language and escaped ; 

All I could never be, 

All men ignored in me, 

This I was worth to God, whose wheel * the pitcher shaped. 150 



XXVI 

Ay, note that Potter's wheel, 

That metaphor! * and feel 

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, — 

Thou, to whom fools propound, 

When the wine makes its round, 155 

" Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!" 



XXVII 

Fool ! All that is at all 

Lasts ever, past recall; 

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure; 

What entered into thee, 160 

That was, is, and shall be; 

Time's wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure. 



xxvni 

He fixed thee mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance, 

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest 165 

Machinery just meant 

To give thy soul its bent, 

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 

1 The metaphor of the Potter's wheel. God is the Potter; time, the wheel; 
and man, the clay. Cf . Isaiah, lxiv, 8 and Jeremiah, xviii, 2-6. 



RABBI BEN EZRA 139 

XXIX 1 

What though the earlier grooves 

Which ran the laughing loves 170 

Around thy base, no longer pause and press? 

What though, about thy rim, 

Skull-things in order grim 

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? 

XXX 

Look thou not down but up! 175 

To uses of a cup, 

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, 
The new wine's foaming flow, 
The Master's lips aglow! 

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's 
wheel? 180 

XXXI 

But I need, now as then, 

Thee, God, who moldest men; 

And since, not even while the whirl was worst, 

Did I, — to the wheel of life, 

With shapes and colors rife, 185 

Bound dizzily, — mistake my end, to stake Thy thirst; 

XXXII 

So take and use Thy work, 

Amend what flaws may lurk, 

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! 

My times be in Thy hand! 19° 

Perfect the cup as planned! 

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same! 

1 What though the pleasures of youth have lost their influence and the 
graver forces of old age prevail? 



140 ONE WORD MORE 

ONE WORD MORE 

To E. B. B. 

(See Note, page 168) 



There they are, my fifty men and women 
Naming me the fifty poems finished ! 
Take them, Love, the book and me together. 
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 

II 

Rafael made a century l of sonnets, 5 

Made and wrote them in a certain volume 

Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil 

Else he only used to draw Madonnas; 

These, the world might view — but one, the volume. 

Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. 10 

Did she live and love it all her lifetime? 

Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, 

Die, and let it drop beside her pillow 

Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, 

Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving — 15 

Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, 

Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's? 

in 

You and I would rather read that volume, 

(Taken to his beating bosom by it) 

Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 20 

Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas — 

1 One hundred. 



ONE WORD MORE 14 1 

Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, 1 

Her, that visits Florence in a vision, 

Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre — 

Seen by us and all the world in circle. 1 25 

IV 

You and I will never read that volume. 

Guido Reni, 2 like his own eye's apple 

Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 

Guido Reni dying, all Bologna 

Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!" 30 

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. 



Dante 3 once prepared to paint an angel — 

Whom to please? You whisper " Beatrice." 4 

While he mused and traced it and retraced it, 

(Perad venture with a pen corroded 5 35 

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, 

When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked, 6 

Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, 

Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, 

Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 40 

Let the wretch go festering through Florence) — 

Dante, who loved well because he hated, 

^he names in lines 22 to 24 refer to Raphael's famous paintings of 
Madonnas, — the "Sistine Madonna" in the Dresden museum, the "Ma- 
donna of Foligno" in the Vatican, Rome, the "Madonna del Granduca" 
at Florence, and "La Belle Jardiniere" (the "Madonna of the Garden") 
in the Louvre at Paris. The top of the last-named painting is circular in 
form; hence "seen in circle." 

2 Famous Italian painter (1575-1642). 

3 The most famous Italian poet (1265-13 21), author of the Divina Corn- 
media, of which the Inferno forms a part. 

4 Dante's romantic love for Beatrice (pronounced Ba-a-tre'che) is related 
in his Vita Nuova. 

6 Dante consigned his personal enemies to various places in his Inferno. 
6 An episode related in the Inferno, xxxii. 



142 ONE WORD MORE 

Hated wickedness that hinders loving, 

Dante standing, studying his angel, — 

In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 45 

Says he — " Certain people of importance" 

(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) 

" Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet." 

Says the poet — " Then I stopped my painting." 

VI 

You and I would rather see that angel, 50 

Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
Would we not? — than read a fresh Inferno. 

VII 

You and I will never see that picture. 

While he mused on love and Beatrice, 

While he softened o'er his outlined angel, 55 

In they broke those " people of importance;" 

We and Bice l bear the loss forever. 

VIII 

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture? 
This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not 
Once, and only once, and for one only, 60 

(Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language 
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 
Using nature that's an art to others, 
Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 
Aye, of all the artists living, loving, 65 

None but would forego his proper dowry, — 
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem, — 
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture, 
Put to proof art alien to the artist's, 
Once, and only once, and for one only, 70 

1 Diminutive of Beatrice, pronounced Be'che. 



ONE WORD MORE 143 

So to be the man and leave the artist, 
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 

IX 

Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement! 

He who smites the rock and spreads the water, 1 

Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, 75 

Even he, the minute makes immortal, 

Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute, 

Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. 

While he smites, how can he but remember, 

So he smote before, in such a peril, 80 

When they stood and mocked — "Shall smiting help us?" 

When they drank and sneered — "A stroke is easy!" 

When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, 

Throwing him for thanks — "But drought was pleasant." 

Thus old memories mar the actual triumph; 85 

Thus the doing savors of disrelish; 

Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; 

O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, 

Carelessness or consciousness, the gesture. 

For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 90 

Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, 

Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude — 

"How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?" 

Guesses what is like to prove the sequel — 

"Egypt's flesh-pots 2 — nay, the drought was better." 95 



Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant! 
Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's 3 cloven brilliance, 3 
Right-arm's rod-sweep, 4 tongue's imperial fiat. 
Never dares the man put off the prophet. 

1 Moses. Cf. Numbers xx, 11. 2 Cf . Exodus xvi, 3. 

3 Cf. Exodus xxxiv, 29. 4 Cf. Numbers xx, 11. 



144 ONE WORD MORE 

XI 

Did he love one face from out the thousands, ioo 

(Were she Jethro's l daughter, white and wifely, 

Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave,) 2 

He would envy yon dumb patient camel, 

Keeping a reserve of scanty water 

Meant to save bis own life in the desert; 105 

Ready in the desert to deliver 

(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) 

Hoard and life together for his mistress. 

XII 

I shall never, in the years remaining, 

Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, no 

Make you music that should all-express me, 

So it seems; I stand on my attainment. 

This of verse alone, one life allows me; 

Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 

Other heights in other lives, God willing; 115 

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love! 

XIII 

Yet a semblance of resource avails us — 

Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. 

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, 

Lines I write the first time and the last time. 120 

He who works in fresco steals a hair-brush, 

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, 

Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, 

Makes a strange art of an art familiar, 

Fills his lady's missal-marge 3 with flowerets. 125 

He who blows through bronze may breathe through silver, 

Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. 

He who writes may write for once as I do. 

1 Cf. Exodus ii, 21. 2 Cf. Numbers xii, 1. 3 Margin of a prayer book. 



ONE WORD MORE 145 

XIV 

Love, you saw me gather men and women, 

Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 130 

Enter each and all, and use their service, 

Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem. 

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 

Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving. 

I am mine and yours — the rest be all men's, 135 

Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. 1 

Let me speak this once in my true person, 

Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, 1 

Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: 

Pray you, look on these my men and women, 140 

Take and keep my fifty poems finished; 

Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! 

Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. 



xv 

Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self! 

Here in London, yonder late in Florence, 145 

Still we find her face, the thrice- transfigured. 

Curving on a sky imbrued with color, 

Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, 

Came she, our new crescent of a hair's breadth. 

Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 2 150 

Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, 

Perfect till the nightingales applauded. 

Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, 

Hard to greet, she traverses the house roofs, 

Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, 155 

Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. 



1 The names in lines 136 and 138 are the names of characters in Brown- 
oems. 
e church of San A 

Browning. — 10 



ings poems. 

2 The church of San Miniato in Florence. 



146 ONE WORD MORE 

XVI 

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy? 

Nay; for if that moon could love a mortal, 

Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy), 

All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos *,) 160 

She would turn a new side to her mortal, 

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman — 

Blank to Zoroaster 2 on his terrace, 

Blind to Galileo 3 on his turret, 

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats 4 — him, even! 165 

Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal — 

When she turns round, comes again in heaven, 

Opens out anew for worse or better! 

Proves she like some portent of an iceberg 

Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170 

Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? 

Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire 5 

Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? 

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu 6 

Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, 175 

Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. 

Like the bodied heaven in his clearness 

Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, 

When they ate and drank and saw God also ! 



XVII 

What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know. 180 
Only this is sure — the sight were other, 
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence, 
Dying now impoverished here in London. 

1 The myth of the mortal Endymion, beloved by Diana. 

2 Founder of the Persian religion. 

3 Famous Italian astronomer (1564-1642). 

4 John Keats (1795-1821), English poet, tells in Endymion of the love 
of Endymion for the moon. 

6 Cf. Exodus, xxiv, 10. 6 Cf. Exodus xxiv, 1, 10. 



ONE WORD MORE 147 

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 

Boasts two soul sides, one to face the world with, 185 

One to show a woman when he loves her! 



xvin 

This I say of me, but think of you, Love! 

This to you — yourself my moon of poets! 

Ah, but that's the world's side — there's the wonder, 

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! 190 

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you — 

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 

But the best is when I glide from out them, 

Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, 

Come out on the other side, the novel 195 

Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 

Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 

XIX 

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 

Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, 

Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 200 

Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom! 



148 EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO 

EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO 

(See Note, page 169) 

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 

When you set your fancies free, 
Will they pass to where — by death, fools think, imprisoned — 
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, 

— Pity me? 5 

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 

What had I on earth to do 
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? 
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel 

— Being — who? 10 

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would 

triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 

Sleep to wake. 15 

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 

Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 
" Strive and thrive!" cry " Speed, — fight on, fare ever 

There as here!" 20 



NOTES 

CAVALIER TUNES (Page 17) 

1842 

These songs appear in the first pages of the volume of Dramatic 
Lyrics. Browning shows in these poems his ability to put himself 
completely into the character and personality of others, — this time, 
of the Cavaliers or rough Royalist soldiers who fought for King 
Charles I in the years 1642-1649 against the Puritan Parliament. 
In reading these songs the essential thing is to get the rhythm and the 
swing. The first is a true marching song; the second is sung in the 
smoke- wreathed tavern tap-room; and the last vividly suggests the 
rapid motion of horseback riding. 

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT 
TO AIX" (Page 20) 

1845 

Although there is no historical foundation for this ride from Ghent 
to Aix, Browning no doubt had in mind the stirring events of the 
time of the "Pacification of Ghent" 1576, when Holland, Zealand 
and the southern Netherlands joined together under the leader- 
ship of William of Orange in order to combat more successfully the 
inroads of Philip II of Spain. The actual route covers a distance of 
over ninety miles. Browning writes to an American inquirer about 
the poem: "I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African 
coast after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy 
of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse 'York,' then in my 
stable at home." 

At any rate the rhythm is again the essential thing. This swing 
and motion characterize the poem from beginning to end and fill it 

149 



150 NOTES 

with intense life. The reader seems to have passed through the ex- 
periences himself. He hears the steady galloping of the horses, first 
three of them, then two, and finally one; he experiences the tense 
straining of eyes, mind, and heart toward the goal, as the long night 
passes; he watches the sun rise and catches the first glimpse of the 
towers of Aix in the distance; he makes the last desperate spurt and 
arrives in time to save the city of Aix. 

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP (Page 23) 

1842 

This poem was founded on fact, a real incident drawn from Na- 
poleon's siege of Ratisbon, or Regensburg, a Bavarian town on the 
Danube, in 1809. 

It is written in a favorite form of the author's, the dramatic mono- 
logue. He leaves to the imagination of the reader the setting in 
which the story is told and the character of the speaker. The poem 
is essentially dramatic. 

HERVfi RIEL (Page 24) 

1871 

This poem was written at Le Croisic, France, on September 30, 
1867, but was not published until 187 1. The 100 pounds which the 
poet received for it, was contributed to the Paris Relief Fund for 
the aid of the starving citizens, after the siege of the city by the Ger- 
mans in 1 87 1. The story is a true one, an incident in the battle of 
the Hogue off the coast of Normandy. France's loss of this battle 
marks the beginning of England's position as mistress of the seas. 
How the remnant of the great French fleet was saved from the hands 
of the English enemy is dramatically told by Browning. The only 
possible escape from the trap in which the French ships found them- 
selves was the passage of the twenty-two ships up the shallow rock- 
bound river, Ranee, to the safety of St. Malo. After the boatmen 
and the pilots of the vicinity had laughed to scorn the proposed un- 
dertaking, and Damfreville, the commander, had ordered the ships to 



NOTES 151 

be run ashore and grounded, the simple sailor, Herve Riel, stepped 
forward and volunteered to guide the ships to safety. When this 
was accomplished, the only reward asked by the simple Breton sailor 
was permission to have a whole day's holiday to go ashore to see his 
wife. In order to appreciate the story the students should look up 
in a geography the Hogue, the Ranee, and St. Malo. Le Croisic, 
the home of Herve Riel, is a small fishing village at the mouth of the 
Loire. Browning was fond of the region and frequently visited it in 
his later life. Let the French students in the class pronounce the 
difficult names as — Riel, Damfreville, Malouins, Croisic, Greve, the 
Louvre, etc. 

PHEIDIPPIDES (Page 30) 

1879 

In this poem, Browning has gone to ancient Athens for his material 
and has succeeded in telling a good story as well as in giving us a 
splendid interpretation of Greek life. During the invasion of Greece 
by the Persians in 490 B. C, according to the historian Herodotus, 
the Athenians, alarmed by the approach of the barbarians sent the 
runner, Pheidippides, to ask for aid from the Spartans. The distance 
from Athens to Sparta, about 140 miles, was covered by this mar- 
velous runner in forty-eight hours. His mission was a useless one, 
for the Spartans refused to risk the bad omen of marching out of the 
city when the moon had not reached the full. Pheidippides, in de- 
spair, started back at once to bear his discouraging message to the 
Athenian rulers. On his return over the Parnes mountains, he came 
upon Pan, who inspired in him renewed confidence and courage by 
promising to come to the aid of the Athenians in battle. They were 
to put absolute trust in him and the day would be saved. The Athe- 
nians, encouraged by the message of Pheidippides, fought with un- 
conquerable courage and energy, and under the leadership of Mil- 
tiades, won the battle of Marathon. The character of Pheidippides 
stands out above the story, passionately patriotic, self-effacing and 
noble. 

For a full interpretation of the classical allusions the pupils should 
consult a classical dictionary. 



152 NOTES 

TRAY (Page 35) 
1879 

Browning was a great lover of animals. His mother had early 
inculcated in him this fondness for beasts, and to her he owed much 
of his knowledge of their ways and habits. He was an enthusiastic 
supporter of institutions for the protection of dumb animals and was 
at one time a vice president of the " Victoria Street Refuge for Ani- 
mals." This poem describes an actual incident witnessed by a friend 
of Browning's in Paris and is an expression of protest against vivi- 
section, which the poet called an "infamous practice." 

In the first two stanzas the first and second bards' attempts to 
sing of conventional heroes are interrupted. The third bard's hero is 
a dog who has rescued a child from drowning. 

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN (Page 37) 

1843 

Browning wrote the Pied Piper to amuse the sick son of William 
Macready, the actor. It was not intended for publication, but 
fortunately for us, it was included at the end of Dramatic Lyrics to 
fill up the final pages. 

THE TWINS (Page 47) 
1854 

The Twins first appeared in a little volume which bore the title 
Two Poems by E. B. B. and R. B. It contained A Plea for the Ragged 
Schools of London by Mrs. Browning and The Twins by Robert Brown- 
ing. The poem is a poetical rendition of a parable in the Table Talk 
of Martin Luther, which shows that charity and prosperity go hand 
in hand. The Latin words Date (give) and Dabitur (it shall be given 
you) are the names of the two brothers who dwelt in the monastery. 



NOTES l S3 

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL (Page 48) 

1844 

This poem, though it has no historical foundation, represents the 
spirit of the Middle Ages. The lesson is the same as that found in 
Pippa Passes that "all service ranks the same with God." Theocrite, 
the poor boy artisan, longs to be Pope that he may praise God in the 
great way. His wish is granted and Gabriel, the angel, is sent to take 
the place of the artisan. But God misses "the little human praise" 
given without fear and with absolute faith. So once again a change 
is made. This time the angel Gabriel takes the place of the Pope 
and Theocrite returns to his humble bench. At Theocrite's death 
the two appear before God, side by side, the highest and the lowest 
equal in the sight of God. 



THE PATRIOT (Page 51) 

This is another monologue in which it is necessary for the reader 
to visualize clearly the speaker, his story, and his state of mind. It 
is well to notice the chronological order used. A year ago the patriot 
entered the city amid the plaudits of the crowd. They would then 
have given him the sun if he had asked for it (lines 1-10). He strove 
to grasp that sun for his people and left nothing undone with which 
he could serve them (lines 11-15). Yet now he goes with his hands 
bound, on the way to his execution, while the people fling stones at 
him (lines 16-25). Meditation on the mutabilities of life (lines 26-30). 



MY LAST DUCHESS (Page 53) 

1843 

My Last Duchess is another poem of the Italian Renaissance period 
in which we learn much of the two characters, the Duchess and the 



154 NOTES 

Duke who is speaking. The subtitle, tells us the locality, Ferrara, 
in which the incident takes place. The Duke is speaking to an ambas- 
sador who has come to make arrangements with him for a second 
marriage. The Duke, an art connoisseur, is showing the envoy his 
art treasures, among which is this portrait of his late Duchess. 
The sight of the picture starts a train of memories in the mind of the 
speaker, which he does not hesitate to express, although he is talking 
to a comparative stranger. His conversation reveals his character 
in all its small ness and meanness. He is jealous, for he would have 
none but a monk to paint his lady and even then, the work must 
be done in a single day. He is hatefully proud, for though the smiling 
joy and plebeian effusiveness of the Duchess offend him, he would 
not stoop to reprove her. His cruelty is shown in the fact that he 
frowns upon her innocent amusements and finally brings about her 
death. He could not love, for he loves himself and his "nine-hundred- 
year-old name" too much. He stands a pitiless, overbearing, heart- 
less figure, typical of the Renaissance criminal. On the other hand, 
his Duchess, aglow with life and love, vivacious and overflowing with 
happiness, is glad to thank the friendly courtier who brings her a 
bough from the blossoming cherry tree; she loves to caress the white 
mule which bears her about the castle terraces; she glows with en- 
thusiasm over the radiant sunset. But her husband cannot bear this 
indiscriminate bestowal of her favors. She smiles too much to please 
him, so he crushes her. It does not matter whether he broke her 
heart or killed her in cold blood. In either case a dastardly murder 
has been committed. Notice the final touch, which completes our 
character sketch of this monster man, when as he turns with his guest 
to leave the gallery, he points out a group of statuary as another 
bit of art of special merit. 



UP AT A VILLA— DOWN IN THE CITY (Page 55) 

i8S5 
It is generally considered that the country is more romantically 
beautiful and poetical than the city; but this opinion is not held by 
this Italian gentleman of reduced circumstances. He scorns the 



NOTES 155 

charms of country life and lauds the city as an ideal place for the 
home of the gentleman of leisure. It seems to be a characteristic 
of the Italian to love the city, where he may keep in close touch 
with his fellows. This trait of character is admirably developed by 
Browning in this poem. Notice the manner in which the Italian 
shows his abhorrence for the beauties to be found in the country. 
He does not see them; therefore he declines to admire them. 



DE GUSTIBUS (Page 58) 

i8S5 

The speaker first describes his friend's love of rural England, and 
then his own love of a castle among the Apennines. Lines 43 and 44 
are written on the walls of the Pallazzo Rezzonico, Venice, in which 
Browning died. 

THE LOST LEADER (Page 60) 

1845 

The subject of this poem is undoubtedly William Wordsworth, 
though it might equally well have been the novelist Charles Kingsley, 
or the poet Robert Southey. Wordsworth in his youth had been an 
enthusiastic propagandist of social reform and democracy. After 
the French Revolution, however, he became the most careful Con- 
servative and Tory. Browning himself says of this poem, "I did 
in my hasty youth presume to use the great and venerated personal- 
ity of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model; one from which this 
or that particular feature may be selected and turned to account. 
Had I intended more, — above all, such a boldness as portraying the 
entire man, I should not have talked about 'handfuls of silver and 
bits of ribbon.' These never influenced the change of politics in 
the great poet, whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied as it was 
by a regular face-about of his special party, was to my juvenile ap- 
prehension, and even mature consideration, an event to deplore. . . . 
So, though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether 



156 NOTES 

refuse to have it considered as the 'very effigies' of such a moral and 
intellectual superiority." 

MEMORABILIA (Page 61) 

i8S5 

From the time that Browning, when a mere boy, accidentally dis- 
covered a pirated edition of part of Shelley's work, he was tremen- 
dously influenced by the freedom and new beauty of the earlier poet. 
And so this poem is an exaltation of an almost ideal being. He meets 
someone who has actually seen Shelley and talked with him and he 
is lost in his wonderment at the miracle, so much so that he becomes 
confused when this acquaintance smiles at his youthful enthusiasm. 
He changes the subject; but the thought of what Shelley has done 
for him remains in his mind and in metaphorical language he speaks 
of the bleak moor over which he was passing when he found the 
"molted feather, an eagle's feather." The blank miles around him 
were forgotten, as only the hand's breadth of ground where the feather 
fell had meaning for him. The eagle feather, with its association of 
wind and cloud and freedom, suggests the spirit of Shelley; the bleak 
moor, the groping period of Browning's early life when the poetry 
of Shelley came to him and showed him the way. Truly he did forget 
the rest. 

EVELYN HOPE (Page 62) 

i855 

This beautiful poem expresses Browning's firm belief that all must 
and will come out right in the end. It is an expression of his fine 
high optimism, even in the face of great tragedy. As we read, we 
find ourselves in the close-shuttered intimate room of the beautiful 
Evelyn Hope who is dead. By her side sits the elderly man who 
has loved her so long, unknown to her. As he sits here, he muses on 
his love for this young girl and expresses the conviction that eventually 
in the Great Beyond, she will understand, appreciate, and return 
his love and that therefore in view of this great love, there can be no 
occasion for mourning. 



NOTES 157 

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (Page 64) 

1855 

The scene of this poem is the Roman Campagna (a large plain in 
Italy, surrounding Rome). In the ruined turret, amidst the pastoral 
quiet that has succeeded to the rush and turmoil of the ancient city 
a "girl with eager eyes" awaits her lover. Contrasting the joy of 
their meeting with the "centuries of folly, noise, and sin," that the 
city has looked down upon, he decides that "Love is best." 

Notice that the first half of each stanza is in direct contrast with 
the last half. 

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA 

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD (Page 67) 

1845 

The two poems, Home Thoughts, from the Sea and Home Thoughts, 
from Abroad were written by Browning on his first trip to Italy in 
1838, but they were not published until 1845 in his volume entitled 
Dramatic Romances. In Browning's revision of 1863, these two 
poems were put among the lyrics, where they seem more properly to 
belong. 

No great poet of English birth has written less of England than 
Browning and yet here and there throughout his poems are many 
lines which show his love of his native country. These two poems 
particularly show us what Browning might have written in honor 
of England, had a larger part of his life been spent there. Home 
Thoughts, from the Sea was written as the ship on which the poet was 
traveling was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. It celebrates 
the grandeur and the glory of English achievement, and inspires 
the poet to a desire to do something for England too. 

The other poem, Home Thoughts, from Abroad is an expression of 
the poet's memory of the beauties of England in April, with its blos- 
soming trees and its fields gay with buttercups and with the song of 
the chaffinch and the thrush. 



158 NOTES 

"Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower!" would seem to indi- 
cate that the poem was written after Browning's arrival in Italy. 

SONGS FROM " PIPPA PASSES " (Page 68) 

1841 

Pippa, the little silk winder, walks through the streets of Asolo 
on her holiday. She sings as she passes, exercising a lasting though 
unconscious influence on various groups of people as she goes. These 
are three of the songs which she sings. 

MEETING AT NIGHT 

PARTING AT MORNING (Page 70) 

1845 
These two companion poems were published first in the seventh 
number of Bells and Pomegranates under the title of Night and Morn- 
ing. The present title was given in the Poetical Works of 1863. The 
speaker is a man who goes from the work of the day to the quiet 
peace and love of his home and in the morning returns to take up 
his duties among men. Line 3 in the second poem has occasioned 
much discussion. 

SUMMUM BONUM (Page 71) 

1889 

This little love lyric, written in the last year of Browning's life, 
shows the youthfulness of his spirit. 

LIFE IN A LOVE (Page 71) 

1855 

The speaker in this poem has resolved to spend his life in pursuit 
of the woman he loves, no matter what efforts she may make to 



NOTES 159 

elude him. No sooner does one hope die than a new one springs up 
in its place. Even if he fails of his purpose, the struggle will have 
been worth while. 



AMONG THE ROCKS (Song from "James Lee's Wife") (Page 72) 

1864 

This poem is taken from a series of nine lyrics, called James Lee's 
Wife. Each of the nine parts is in the form of a soliloquy, expressing 
the musings and emotions of a wife whose husband, if he ever was 
capable of love, has ceased to love her. In the poem selected, the 
autumn morning seems an appropriate incentive for the expression 
of her philosophy. She, too, has reached the autumn period of life 
when she can give of herself to the "low nature" without any thought 
of return. 

It will be noticed that while Browning shows himself to be a great 
lover of nature, he is so much more a lover of human nature that 
he describes natural scenes in terms of human characteristics. 



MISCONCEPTIONS (Page 73) 

This is a poem of disappointment in love with a touch of happiness 
in the review of the past. Just as the spray burst into bloom through 
joy over the moment when the bird had rested on it, so the lover's 
heart was thrilled by a moment of his lady's favor, before she for- 
sook him. 

A FACE (Page 73) 

1864 

The speaker, a painter, imagines how the head of a beautiful girl 
whom he knows would look "painted upon a background of pale 
gold, such as the early Tuscan's art prefers." 



160 NOTES 

MY STAR (Page 74) 

1855 

This poem, which has been set to music, is said to be a tribute to 
Mrs. Bro wrung. She is his particular star and shines for him alone. 
When his friends, too, would gaze at it, its light is dimmed. They 
must content themselves with Saturn in the heavens above. 



PROSPICE (Page 75) 

1864 

Pros pice (look forward) was written in the autumn after Mrs. 
Browning's death. Not only is it an expression of Browning's grief, 
but it sounds his strong conviction and faith in a personal im- 
mortality. Near the end of his own life he said to a friend: "Death, 
death! It is this harping on death I despise so much, — this idle and 
often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not 
change like everything else? . . . For myself, I deny death as an 
end of anything. Never say of me that I am dead." 



THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER (Page 76) 

1855 

The speaker is a young man whose offer of marriage has just been 
rejected by the girl whom he loves, whose friendship, shown on their 
frequent rides together, he has misunderstood. There is no recrimi- 
nation; not even any sadness. Since she cannot return his love, he 
will be content with the sweet memory of their friendship. He only 
asks that she shall accompany him on one more ride which shall be 
their last together. She consents to go with him, as they had planned 
before his declaration. 

What need is there for regret over what is past, — where he failed 
and how? It is enough that they are riding on together. Why not 
be content with the gifts that life bestows? Failure is to be found 



NOTES 161 

everywhere. Is not an unfulfilled ideal better than the glory garland 
of the victor? "Who knows what's fit for us?" 

In this poem Browning develops a favorite theme that life is greater 
than art. The poet who writes of love in such a way as to thrill the 
heart cannot be so great as the lovers who have actually experienced 
the great emotions. Is there any man who will not turn from the 
rarest sculpture or painting to look upon a beautiful girl who crosses 
his path? Fame is for him who can reach it; but to the speaker there 
is no desire to try for it, while he may "ride forever ride" 

BY THE FIRESIDE (Page 80) 

The speaker is a middle-aged man addressing his "perfect wife, 
my Leonor." He is looking ahead to the time when they shall have 
reached that period of life symbolized by "the long dark autumn 
evenings" — "in life's November," when life's page shall no longer 
be verse for them but prose. Sitting by the fireside they will review 
their life together, feeling ever the "love of wedded souls" which 
has brought them a true spiritual awakening. They will pass again 
through the pleasant woods which they traversed together in their 
youth. . First come the hazel trees of England and rapidly succeeding 
them Italy, the land of youth, the woman country loved by earth's 
male lands. Italy shall be the guide, and he will follow wherever 
she leads. 

Up into the oft-visited and much loved ravine they go, where the 
ruined chapel stands. Caught in the spell of the picturesque beauty 
which unrolls itself at their feet, they stop, and the poet losing him- 
self in retrospection marvels at the wonder of all that middle age 
and declining years may mean to man. 

Stanzas xxi to xxxi contain the real thought of the poem, for in 
them we see how these two have developed a lofty spirituality 
through their love for each other. 

The lines in stanza xxiii 

"that great brow 
And the spirit-small hand propping it" 
Browning. — n 



i62 NOTES 

are descriptive of Mrs. Browning and probably much of this poem 
is a reflection of the inner significance of the poet's own wedded life. 
With the lines in stanza xxxi 

"What did I say? . . . that a small bird sings" 

Browning continues the description of the scene in the gorge. In the 
deepening twilight, as the silence grows to such degree that you half 
believe it must get rid of what it knows, they wander side by side, 
arm in arm and cheek to cheek. Over the ruined bridge to the chapel 
they go and peer through the window at the barren interior; gaze at 
the frescoes and the builder's date above the door and then cross the 
bridge again — but wait! Suddenly in the quiet and the peace of the 
forest, as the sun is setting in the West comes to them the one moment 
of supreme exaltation when they know 

"... that a bar was broken between 
Life and life; we were mixed at last 
In spite of the mortal screen." 



INSTANS TYRANNUS (Page 91) 

1855 

There is a striking vigor and strength in the speech of this threaten- 
ing tyrant. His phrasing is clear-cut, incisive, bold even to the abrupt 
climax at the end. We feel that he is a man of force, of insight, and 
of action. Yet, with his power and strength, he cannot understand 
this other man who for some cause undefined was, in the beginning, 
least to his mind of all men in his realm. It is this other who is the 
real hero, who with splendid faith and courage resists all persecution. 
Temptation and the wiles of the crafty do not affect him. He pur- 
sues his course calmly and surely, unafraid. His very steadfastness 
causes the king greater anger and he determines to outwit his victim 
in a final great test. Then it is that the proud figure of the vassal 
rises to sublime heights of nobility and — 

"The man sprang to his feet, 
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!" 



NOTES 163 

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND (Page 94) 

184S 

The background of the story is the struggle of Italy against Aus- 
tria in the Revolution of 1848. The speaker was formerly an impor- 
tant Italian leader. Now broken and old, an exile in England, he 
delights in living over his experiences in the struggle of Italian liberals 
against Austrian oppression. He describes his escape from the Aus- 
trians through the help of a simple peasant girl. Though there is 
no historical basis for this story, it reflects with extraordinary clear- 
ness and accuracy the state of affairs in Italy at that time. 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL (Page 99) 

1855 

This poem is not based on historical incident, though it gives an 
accurate idea of the love of learning in the early years of the Re- 
naissance. " Grammarian" must be understood, not in its restricted 
modern sense, but as one dedicated to learning, or letters, in 
general. 

The enthusiastic students of the dead scholar are bearing his body 
for burial up the steep mountain-side to the most lofty peak. They 
do not weep, they sing as they go, exulting in the glory of their hero 
who, forgetting all that attracts and draws the average man, — fame, 
love, personal gain — devoted himself to study and the pursuit of 
knowledge. The swinging, marching movement of the students is 
in exact accord with the message which they shout. 

The bearers review his life as they go, ever higher and higher on 
up toward their goal. The Grammarian did not take up scholarship 
as the only calling open to him. He could have done anything; but 
he chose to study Greek grammar and spared nothing, not even his 
health, to carry out his hard work. 

The parts in parenthesis are the directions of the leader to his 
companions. 



164 NOTES 

ANDREA DEL SARTO (Page 104) 

1855 

Before reading this masterpiece of character drawing, it is neces- 
sary that we understand the facts of the life of Andrea del Sarto, or 
rather the facts given us by Vasari, the Italian chronicler, for it is 
from this source that Browning draws his material. Andrea del 
Sarto was born in Florence in i486. His father was a tailor, hence, 
his name "Sarto," the Italian for "tailor." At an early age he was 
apprenticed to a goldsmith, later to a wood-carver and painter. By 
1509 he had acquired a reputation as a painter and was known among 
his contemporaries as "Andrew the unerring" or "the faultless 
painter." He worked with rapidity and with absolute correctness 
of detail but his painting was often characterized by lack of depth 
and soul. Though his pictures are superior technically to those of 
his contemporaries — Rafael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, 
yet the work of these other painters shows greater inspiration. 

In his youth, Andrea fell in love with the beautiful Lucrezia del 
Fede, the wife of a capmaker, and after her husband's death, he 
married her. For the rest of his life he devoted himself to satisfying 
the desires and selfish caprices of this woman. She did not appreciate 
the genius of her husband except in so far as it gained for her the 
money with which to satisfy her whims and needs. She encouraged 
him to take commissions which he could not execute well. Having 
completely entrapped the heart of Andrea, she caused him to neglect 
the studies which might have made him more than the "faultless 
painter." He forgot all other claims upon him, and neglected even 
his own family who were dependent upon him. 

The fame of Andrea's painting reached the court of Francis I of 
France, and Andrea was persuaded to go there to paint for the king. 
He was feted and bounteously rewarded in advance by the French 
king. "But one day came to him certain letters from Florence 
written by his wife with bitter complaints. Moved by all this, he 
resolved to resume his chains. Taking money which the king con- 
fided to him for the purchase of pictures and statues, — he set off, 
having sworn on the Gospels to return in a few months. Arrived in 



NOTES 165 

Florence he lived joyously with his wife for some time, making pres- 
ents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his own parents, 
who died in poverty and misery. When the period specified by the 
king had come, he found himself at the end not only of his own money, 
but of that of the king. He remained in Florence, therefore, procur- 
ing a livelihood as he best might." 

This sad story is told by Browning in his favorite monologue form 
and the two characters stand out clearly: Andrea, the gentle, weak, 
enamored man who would have lived nobly, perhaps, had he married 
someone else, and beautiful Lucrezia, the false, selfish woman, long 
since grown weary of the protestations of the husband whom she 
slights. 

The picture of Andrea del Sarto and his wife Lucrezia, painted by 
Andrea himself and now hanging in the Pitti Palace, Florence, occa- 
sioned the writing of the poem, according to Mr. Furnivall. A friend 
of Mrs. Browning's had asked the poet to buy for him a copy of the 
picture. Since none could be procured, Browning wrote the poem 
trying to put into it what the picture meant to him. 



ABT VOGLER (Page 112) 
1864 

The original of this poem, Abbe Georg Joseph Vogler, was born at 
Wurzburg, Bavaria, June 15, 1749. He became director of music 
to the King of Sweden in 1786. While occupying this position, he 
invented the orchestrion, a mechanically operated pipe-organ that 
is capable of producing a variety of orchestral effects. He visited 
London in 1790 and gave a series of successful concerts. After his 
trip to London he was engaged to rebuild several large organs in 
Europe, including that of the Pantheon in Paris. 

Browning shows us Abt Vogler as a great extemporizer. As this 
poem is written, the musician has just finished a marvelous phantasy 
of extemporization. He sits bowed over his organ, weeping with 
emotion aroused by the glorious music he has composed. He wishes 
that he might have been a builder so that his inspiration would have 



1 66 NOTES 

remained a permanent possession of humanity. Or if he could have 
been a painter or a poet, then too would his art have been lasting. 

Yet there is another point of view; for painter and poet are bound 
by conventionality, by rules of form, while his creation comes from 
the very soul. It is not all sorrow that he feels, for he appreciates 
the source of his inspiration. It is not he that has produced this 
beautiful music but the hand of God, which has opened up heaven 
to him and permitted him to enter the celestial gates and behold 
the eternal radiance there. Thus, after all, the loss of the music may 
not be irreparable. The inspiration may come again to him. 

Man spends the span of his life wondering over the problem of 
what it all means. The philosopher puzzles, the scholar studies, and 
no answer is given. To the musician alone, who has heard the voice 
of the Eternal, comes the solution. He has lived close to Nature, 
has felt the throbbing of the Divine within. He it is who "knows." 

SAUL (Page 117) 
1845-1855 

The first nine stanzas of this poem were published in Bells and 
Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics in 1845. The 
complete poem, with ten additional stanzas, appeared in Men and 
Women in 1855. 

The work is based on the incident in I Samuel xvi, 14-23 'in which 
David by playing on his harp drives away the evil spirit that is trou- 
bling Saul. From this bare incident from the Scriptures, Browning 
weaves a wonderful tapestry of color and life. The Bible merely 
gives us the fact that Saul was consoled by David. Browning inter- 
prets for us the music that David might have played and sung. 
Through him we see at the beginning the great figure of Saul 

. . . "erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide . . . 
drear and stark, blind and dumb." 

Then later calmed, assuaged, peaceful — 

" ... he slowly resumed 
His old motions and habitudes kingly." 



NOTES 167 

David, the simple shepherd, has wrought this change. He has 
chosen as his first motive the simple primeval songs which will quiet 
the tortured nerves and rest the weary soul of the king. He sings 
as if he were on his own mountain-side playing to the sheep, to the 
quail, to the crickets and to the jerboa. 

Then when the tension is relieved and Saul is somewhat relaxed, 
David's theme becomes that of the "help-tunes" of the great epochs 
in human life, first of the reapers, then of burial, of marriage, of 
soldiers and of priests. 

Suddenly there is another greater change; Saul is drawn from his 
reverie, he is awake and David goes on to sing to him of human as- 
piration. The first is a hymn of praise to physical life, to youth, to 
strength, to the splendid embodiment of physical manhood, the 
finest specimen on the earth of the athlete, King Saul. The mere 
joy of living, the rapture of the plunge into cold water, the delicious- 
ness of food and wine, the joy of deep sleep, all have their places in 
life. They have all played an important part in the youth of Saul 
himself; and David, with keen insight into the life of the king, takes 
him back with the music to those days when he knew no despondency. 

With the calling of his name in line 96, Saul comes fully to himself. 
He hopes, he believes, the evil spirit is gone. 

. . . "What next should I urge 
To sustain him where song had restored him? " 

asks Saul and almost instantly comes the divine inspiration of the 
prophet, of the seer. Now he sings in a finer, purer strain, praising 
the unborn generations and the reward and repose of the next world. 
In the eighteenth stanza we reach the great climax in which in con- 
trast to the figure of King Saul in stanza ix as the perfection of physi- 
cal manhood, we find the Christ as the culmination of all human 
history and endeavor, the greatest inspiration and leader of mankind. 
During these eighteen stanzas we have seen the effect of the music 
upon Saul; in the nineteenth, we see the effect of his own genius upon 
David himself, as he staggers away exhausted, toward his home, 
surrounded by visions and cohorts of angels. Seldom do we find in 
literature any idea of the feeling of the great genius, of the musician, 



1 68 NOTES 

the painter, the poet, after he has finished the great masterpiece. 
May not this stanza represent in words the feelings of Browning 
himself when he had finished a great poem? 



RABBI BEN EZRA (Page 132) 



Rabbi Ben Ezra was a Spanish philosopher and poet of the twelfth 
century, distinguished alike for his piety and for his learning. The 
philosophy of the poem is drawn from the rabbi's writings. The 
idea of the poem is that a complete view of life must ignore neither 
youth nor age. Each stage of life has its worth as a period in the 
evolution of the soul; but old age, so far from being a period of de- 
cline, is the best time of our existence, — the summit from which the 
experiences of youth and manhood can be viewed as part of the gen- 
eral landscape of life. The pleasures of youth are not to be despised. 
The conflict between flesh and spirit is as fruitful as it is inevitable; 
but the greatest heights are reached only when the body promotes 
the loftiest aims of the soul. Obstacles and suffering are necessary 
spurs to man's development. His success should be measured not 
alone by his achievements, but by his unsure purposes and unful- 
filled aspirations as well. 

The last eight stanzas of the poem elaborate the metaphor of the 
Potter's Wheel, in which God is the Potter, life, the wheel, and man, 
the clay from which the cup is fashioned to slake the thirst of God. 
(Cf. Isaiah lxiv, 8; and Jeremiah xviii, 3 to 6.) 

ONE WORD MORE (Page 140) 

1855 

A few years after the Brownings were married, Mrs. Browning 
brought to her husband the manuscript of her Sonnets from the Por- 
tuguese. Very modestly, almost diffidently, she presented this pas- 
sionate outpouring of her love for him. Browning had just prepared 
for publication a volume of poems which he called Fifty Men and 
Women. To this he added the epilogue, One Word More, which is 



NOTES 169 

his reply to her poems. It might more properly be placed as a dedi- 
cation, for in this poem he gives her not only One Word More but 
the entire book. After the first introductory lines, Browning pro- 
ceeds to develop the idea that he would prefer to honor his wife in 
some other way than poetry, — by a painting or a piece of music, 
but that he must rely upon the only gift which God has given him, — 
poetry. He recalls the fact that the painter Raphael made a "century 
of sonnets " to express his love in an individual way, that Dante, the 
poet, honored his Beatrice by painting an angel. As these men longed 
to express themselves to the one woman loved best, in a way new 
and untried by them, so Browning in this poem wished to write, for 
her alone, something which should express his great love. The cul- 
mination of Browning's tribute is found in the wonderful stanzas, 
xii-xv. 

"Let me speak this once in my true person." 

As for Mrs. Browning, she is his "moon of poets." The world sees 
one side of her in her poetry, never the intimate tender side, which is 
turned away from the world toward him alone. 



EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO (Page 148) 

1889 

It is particularly appropriate that this poem should close any 
collection of Browning's poetry, not only because it is the last poem 
which he wrote, but also because it expresses so strongly the tri- 
umphant doctrine of his life and of his work. 

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward." 

In regard to the third stanza, one evening just before his final 
illness as the poet was reading the printer's proof-sheets to his 
daughter-in-law and sister, he said: "It almost looks like bragging to 
say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and 
as it is true it shall stand." This poem should be compared with 
Tennyson's farewell, Crossing the Bar. 



ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers (Underwood) 
Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum (Tanner) 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (Jones and Arnold) 
Burke's Conciliation with America (Clark) 

Speeches at Bristol (Bergin) 
Burns's Poems — Selections (Venable) 
Byron's Childe Harold (Canto IV), Prisoner of Chillon, Ma- 

zeppa, and other Selections (Venable) 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns (Miller) 
Chaucer's Prologue and Knighte's Tale (Van Dyke) 
Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Garrigues) 
Cooper's Pilot (Watrous) 

The Spy (Barnes) 
Defoe's History of the Plague in London (Syle) 

Robinson Crusoe (Stephens) 
De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars 

Dickens's Christmas Carol and Cricket on the Hearth (Wan- 
namaker) 

Tale of Two Cities (Pearce) 
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite (Bates) 
Eliot's Silas Marner (McKitrick) 
Emerson's American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Compensation 

(Smith) 
Franklin's Autobiography (Reid) 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (Hansen) 

Deserted Village (See Gray's Elegy) 
Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and Goldsmith's De- 
serted Village (Van Dyke) 
Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (Gosling). 
Irving's Sketch Book — Selections (St. John) 

Tales of a Traveler (Rutland) 
Lincoln's Addresses and Letters (Moores) 

Address at Cooper Union (See Macaulay's Speeches on 
Copyright) 
Macaulay's Essay on Addison (Matthews) 

Essay on Milton (Mead) 



(S.95) 



ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Macaulay's Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings 
(Holmes) 

Lays of Ancient Rome and other Poems (Atkinson) 

Life of Johnson (Lucas) 

Speeches on Copyright, and Lincoln's Address at Cooper 
Union (Pittenger) 
Milton's L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas (Buck) 

Paradise Lost. Books I and II (Stephens) 
Old Ballads (Morton). In preparation. 
Old Testament Narratives (Baldwin) 
Poe's Selected Poems and Tales (Stott) 
Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books I, VI, XXII, and XXIV 

Rape of the Lock and Essay on Man (Van Dyke) 
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies (Rounds) 
Scott's Abbot 

Ivanhoe (Schreiber) 

Lady of the Lake (Bacon) 

Marmion (Coblentz) 

Quentin Durward (Norris) 

Woodstock 
Shakespeare's As You Like It (North) 

Hamlet (Shower) 

Henry V (Law) 

Julius Caesar (Baker) 

Macbeth (Livengood) 

Merchant of Venice (Blakely) 

Midsummer Night's Dream (Haney) 

The Tempest (Barley). 

Twelfth Night (Weld) 
Southey's Life of Nelson 

Stevenson's Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey 
(Armstrong) 

Treasure Island (Fairley) 
Swift's Gulliver's Travels (Gaston) 
Tennyson's Idylls of the King — Selections (Willard) 

Princess (Shryock) 
Thackeray's Henry Esmond (Bissell) 
Washington's Farewell Address, and Webster's First Bunker 

Hill Oration (Lewis) 
Webster's Bunker Hill Orations (See also Washington's 

Farewell Address) 
Wordsworth's Poems — Selections (Venable) 

(S.95a) 



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